Chameleon

By Vibhakar Kotak

(Outskirts Press, 2007)

At 8:50 a.m. on September 11, 2001, NYU neuroscience senior researcher Vibhakar Kotak found himself immersed in complete chaos as he arrived via PATH train to the basement of World Trade Center building #1. He managed to escape outside among the falling metal and glass and witnessed the second airplane hit the World Trade Center’s south tower.
    Kotak draws on pivotal life experiences such as this as well as contemporary and classic works of art in his collection of poetry entitled Chameleon. His verses, he says, articulate his fascination with the “hypocrisy” and “duplicity” of human behavior. As a scientist at NYU’s Center for Neural Science, Kotak has published numerous academic papers and co-authored several science book chapters detailing synaptic functions in the field of developmental, cellular, and auditory neurobiology. In Chameleon, Kotak communicates “the limitless potential of the human mind” with a series of poems each accompanied by hand-drawn color cartoons.