Yellow Submarine

Poetry by Subhankar Das   ≅  Art by Deana Plymale

Yellow Submarine

As I was carrying the food tray

and looking for a place to sit

I was denied a chair in three tables

where others were having their breakfast.

The reply was always the same

they are waiting for someone.

I finally found a lone table

at a corner where I finished my food.

I left Stockholm after three days,

and went seeking other places

other lives in Europe

finally coming to Vienna in December.

I was in a youth hostel there

and trying again to find a place with my food tray.

I saw a guy sitting all alone

at the end of a huge table.

So I took a chair on the farthest corner

and sat there..

From the corner of my eye I saw

him looking up with a start.

He stood up with his tray

and moved away with some other group.

Go fuck yourself I thought

I cannot stand all day

to find an empty table

and I was damn hungry

Who cares if he thought

I was a bimbo,

who might bit his crotch to pieces.

I ate and remembered my friend a black poet

Who said—‘You don’t even exist man.

This world is divided between White and Black people.

The power equation and everything

goes like that.

You are colored and so you do not exist

in this game of power’.

But I did exist like a bad spirit.

After a few minutes my new friend

the Turkish-German football coach walked in.

He joined me

eating his food with his bare fingers

and we soon found we both have

great appetite.

~ Subhankar Das