The young man and his double-clicks
In a cyberworld
Of bits and bytes,
Full of elves, tough turtles, dementors,
Warriors and evil beings,
Who destroy hamlets, towns,
Civilisations,
At the command of a few clicks.
An unreal world
Where the fantasy stories
Are pre-programmed.
The elimination of farmers, slaves,
Knaves and enemy warriors,
But a click away.
You are the creator,
The maker and destroyer,
You are Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma.
Thumbs up or down,
Death to you,
Delete.
Yawn!
HOOKED TO BITS & BITES (Satis Shroff)
Your’re short of amphetamines.
It’s a long way to the apothecary.
More clicks,
More tiredness,
You’re falling asleep.
Drowsy bits and bytes,
You haven’t taken a bite.
Your inner man is growling,
But you have no time,
For bodily needs.
You’re hooked
To your bits and bytes.
Oh, it bites.
--------------------------------------
Groggy in the Afternoon (Satis Shroff)
Groggy from the Cyberworld at home,
Fritz goes to school.
He’s tired of school,
And is restless.
Retalin doesn’t seem to work today.
The lessons are irrelevant,
He sees not the classmates.
He sees the goblins, Power Rangers,
Sword-fighting Ninjas ,
Scores of other figures
With terrifying grimaces.
Fritz also makes a grimace.
He is now a monster in his thoughts,
Has to strike the others
With his laser-sword.
Definciency Syndrome (Satis Shroff)
The enemy surrounds him,
Laser-blades flash like lightning.
A gash and Fritz falls on the floor.
He’s wounded,
But rotates his prostrate torso
With his fast working legs,
Lashes out with his sword.
He’s almost killed them all.
He’s a hero who never gives up.
Suddenly he hears teacher Frau Hess’s voice:
'Fritz, steh auf!'
He becomes calm,
Gets up.
Gone are the warriors, Power Rangers,
And super heroes and mighty enemies.
Fritz recognises his classmates,
Hans, Joachim, Cassandra, Brunhild,
As they shake their heads.
Was it a dream?
Oh je! Frau Hess will certainly call Mom.
And tell it all.
‘Scheiß ADS!’ mutters Kevin.
Glossary:
ADS: Allgemeine Deficiency Syndrome
The Japanese Garden (Satis Shroff)
Nine Hauptschule kids in their teens,
Sit on benches in the Japanese Garden,
Near the placid, turquoise lake.
The homework is done sloppily.
Who cares?
The boys are bursting with hormones,
As they tease the only blonde from Siberia.
A fat guy named Heino likes the blonde,
But she doesn’t fancy him.
Annäherung, Vermeidung:
A conflict develops.
The teacher tells him in no uncertain terms:
“Lass Sie bitte in Ruhe!”
But Heino with the MP3 doesn’t care
And carries on:
Grasping her breasts,
Caressing her groin.
She puts up a fight
To no avail.
Heino is stronger, impertinent,
And full of street rhetoric.
Meanwhile, the other teenies
Are climbing, kicking the Japanese pavilion,
Spitting, cursing shouting
At all and sundry in German.
Hauptschule Kids (Satis Shroff)
The grey-haired gardener in charge comes,
Tells the Hauptschule boys to behave
And goes.
Boredom in the afternoon.
The boys don’t want to play soccer,
Handball or basketball.
Sitting around, criticising, irritating each other,
Is cool.
Creative workshops: music, songs, essays, own movies?
Nothing interests them.
Killing time together,
Cursing at each other,
Getting a kick provoking passersby,
This is the Hauptschule in Germany today.
The clever kids go to the Gymnasium,
After the fourth class.
Matsuyama Blues (Satis Shroff)
The trouble-makers, aggressive alpha-wolves
And clowns remain in the Hauptschule.
An ironical name for a school,
For Haupt means the ‘main’
Comprising the lower class of the society:
Kids of foreigners, ethnic Germans from the East Bloc,
Who hope to make it somehow,
As apprentices for hair salons, car repair garages,
Kebab shops, Italian restaurants, Balkan kitchens,
Roofers and masons.
The Japanese Garden, a present from Matsuyama
To the people of Freiburg,
With truncated shrubs and rounded trees.
A waterfall and quiet niches,
A place for contemplation and solitude.
For the Hauptschule kids,
A place to get together,
Be loud, grunt, fight with fists, shove, scratch,
Slap, spit everywhere,
And play the gangsta.
“At night they throw empty alcohol bottles
Where ever they like,” says an elderly lady
From the neighbourhood.
Wonder how the kids are in Matsuyama?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sonderschool (Satis Shroff)
“Halt’s Maul, Du Missgeburt!”
Says one to the other.
‘Halt dein Mund, Du Jude!
Ich hasse Juden, Mann!’ barks an obese Hauptschuler.
The others play football in the classroom.
The teacher says emphatically,
‘It’s forbidden to play soccer here!’
They reply in chorus:
‘It doesn’t disturb anybody.’
A grey-blonde teacher barges into the room and says:
‘Leben Sie hier noch?’ to his colleague.
Are you still alive?
Boris has an appointment with the police.
They nabbed him stealing a car.
Nicky quips to Suleika:
‘Du hast einen fetten Arsch!
Gebärfreudige Hintern.’
Albin runs helter skelter,
Settles down on a table,
Chewing gum between his yellow teeth,
Doesn’t like authority.
DEAD END (Satis Shroff)
Hans, Fritz and Bruno do their extra homework,
Meted out as a punishment by the English teacher.
Vitaly throws scissors in the classroom,
Which land with a thud on the cork wall.
Heino is doing his best to disturb the group,
With his loud MP3 music.
‘Ha! Ha! Ha! Du Hurensohn!’ he says,
To a fellow classmate.
A Kosovo-kid who’s hyperactive,
Steals and fights at school.
The Germans send him to a Sonderschule.
His father’s proud for ‘sonder’ means ‘special.’
His son is attending an elite school, he thinks,
Only to realise later,
It was a school for difficult children.
A dead-end.
East Bloc Kid Goes West (Satis Shroff)
A pair of heavy scissors fly
In a dark Hauptschule classroom,
Thrown by an Aussiedler school-kid,
Near Freiburg’s Japanese Garden.
The scissors can slash your face,
Or mine.
You can be maimed for life,
Like Scarface,
If the sharp ends
Bury in your eyes,
Or mine.
Let there be light.
Vitaly, a boy from the former east Bloc
Comes to the West,
In search of ancestors and heritage.
What he gets is rejection but freedom.
Freedom to do as he pleases,
With pleasant negative sanctions.
‘Even in jail they have TV,’ he says with a laugh.
He grows up in a ghetto,
And his anger burns.
Anger at his ageing parents,
Who forced him to come to the West,
But who are themselves lost in this new world
Of democratic, liberal values,
Luxurious and electronic consumer delights,
Where everyone cares for himself or herself,
Where the old structures of the society
They clung to in the east Bloc days
Don’t exist.
A brave new world,
A Schlaraffenland,
Where economy and commerce flourishes,
Where the individual’s view is important,
To himself,
To herself
And to others.
The East Bloc boy learns
To assert himself in the West,
Not with solid arguments and rhetoric
But with his two fists.
He fancies cars and their contents,
Breaks open the windows,
Takes all he wants.
Brushes with the police
At an early age.
English, Latin and French at school,
Irritates him,
He prefers to play the clown:
To dance on the table,
Make suggestive moves with his groin,
High on designer drugs,
High all the time.
Opens the classroom door,
Sees a girl from the seventh grade,
And yells at her.
His behaviour brings laughter
But he turns off the girls he admires.
He grins and insults his peers.
Rejected by youngsters,
Admonished by grown-ups,
He watches the society.
Chic clothes, streamlined cars, plastic money,
But he forgets that there’s personal performance
Behind these worldly riches.
‘The rich German drives his BMW
With his head in the air.
What does he care?
What does he care?’
Thinks Vitaly.
A pair of scissors fly
In a dark classroom.
His pent-up emotions,
Let loose in a German Hauptschool,
Near the Japanese Garden.
His classmate from Croatia
Throws chairs at another.
‘Aus Spass’ he says.
Just for fun.
He shouts at the German Putzfrau,
Who cleans the classrooms:
‘Sie Geistesgestörte!’
You mad woman.
And jerks his pelvis at her.
Is the school-system to blame?
Are western culture, tradition
Social, liberal values and norms to blame?
Are his parents who speak a conserved Deutsch to blame?
Is his Russian mother-tongue
And his great Russian soul to blame?
Nobody answers his questions,
Nobody cares,
Out in the West.
“Verdammt, I want to be heard!” screams Vitaly.
The people shake their heads,
Mutter, ‘Ein Spinner!’
And walk away.
A pair of sharp, long scissors
Fly in a dark classroom.
The scissors can slash your face,
Or mine.
THE SEA SWELLS (Satis Shroff)
The sea shells on the sea shore
Suddenly the sea swells.
Ring the church and temple bells.
All is not well.
The sea has gone back.
Brown-burnt Tarzans and Janes
From different continents,
Wonder what’s going on.
A man from Sweden
Is immersed in his thriller under the palms.
A mother and daughter from Germany
Frolic on the white sunny beach.
Even the sea-gulls stop and listen
To the foreboding silence.
The sea swells,
Comes back
And brings an apocalyptic destruction:
Sweeping humans, huts and hotels,
Boats, billboards and debris.
Cries for help are stifled by the roaring waves.
The sea goes back.
Leaving behind lost souls,
Caught in suspended animation.
I close my eyes.
Everything dies.
Tsunami. Tsunami.
Om Shanti. Om shanti.
WENN EIN KIND/ If a Child...(Anon)
Wenn ein Kind kritisiert wird,
lernt es zu verurteilen.
Wenn ein Kind angefeindet wird,
lernt es zu kämpfen.
Wenn ein Kind verspottet wird,
lernt es schüchtern zu sein.
Wenn ein Kind beschämt wird,
lernt es sich schuldig zu sein.
Wenn ein Kind verstanden und toleriert wird,
lernt es geduldig zu sein.
Wenn ein Kind ermutigt wird,
lernt es sich selbst zu vertrauen.
Wenn ein Kind gelobt wird,
lernt es sich selbst zu schätzen.
Wenn ein Kind gerecht behandelt wird,
lernt es sich gerecht zu sein.
Wenn ein Kind geborgen lebt,
lernt es zu vertrauen.
Wenn ein Kind anerkannt wird,
lernt es sich selbst zu mögen.
Wenn ein Kind in Freundschaft angenommen wird,
lernt es in der Welt Liebe zu finden.
(Text über dem Eingang einer tibetischen Schule)
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What others have said about the author: 'Brilliant, I enjoyed your poems throughly. I can hear the underlying German and Nepali thoughts within your English language. The strictness of the German form mixed with the vividness of your Nepalese mother tongue. An interesting mix. Nepal is a jewel on the Earths surface, her majesty and charm should be protected, and yet exposed with dignity through words. You do your country justice and I find your bicultural understanding so unique and a marvel to read.' Reviewed by Heide Poudel in WritersDen.com 6/4/2007.
'Since 1974 I have been living on and off in Nepal, writing articles and publishing books about Nepal-- this beautiful Himalayan country. Even before I knew Satis Shroff personally (later) I was deeply impressed by his articles, which helped me very much to deepen my knowledge about Nepal.Satis Shroff is one of the very few Nepalese writers being able to compare ecology, development and modernisation in the ‘Third’ and ‘First’ World. He is doing this with great enthusiasm, competence and intelligence, showing his great concern for the development of his own country.' (Ludmilla Tüting, journalist and publisher, Berlin).
Satis Shroff writes with intelligence, wit and grace. (Bruce Dobler, Associate Professor in Creative Writing MFA,University of Iowa).
'The manner in which Satis Shroff writes takes the reader right along with him. Extremely vivid and just enough and the irony of the music. Beautiful prosaic thought and astounding writing.
'Your muscles flex, the nerves flatter, the heart gallops,
As you feel how puny you are,
Among all those incessant and powerful waves.'
Satis Shroff's writing is refined – pure undistilled.' (Susan Marie, www.Gather.com).
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