children

Three Wing'd Horses

I have overtired my self
Like an old man pulling wing'd horses by a string,
Lost and ignored, on the side of a street.

It requires much of art, and of diplomacy
To prevent their escape, for the string, it may break
And they take to the sky and fly away from me,
These bothersome beasts, struggling quietly,
Sidling glances, questioningly:
"And what exactly do you think you are up to?” they ask.

And then Pharaoh, in a sob, spoke thus to his men:
“We have come to a city where we’ll leave not a trace,
Not a face will remember we visited this place.”
-And when the stone rolls downhill,
Push it back up again!

Oh those three wing’d horses,
Caused this…
But to stop the tape there and then,
To pause the frame, to step out and observe;
Discuss with esteemed panelists the position
Of a Pharaoh in the face of a Red sea split three ways,
One is forced to confess: “If you just do as I say; if only…
You do as I say; after all, I mean
I know what is best. I have seen our lives
Lived a hundred times. I know. I know all.
I am Rameses, Pharaoh, man who'd be God.
But they resist...
And I am left in the steam puffs from nostrils
Of wing’d beasts that submit not their will;
And they will not submit.”

I feel I have overtired my self, overstretched my ambition.
So now a good night’s sleep for a man,
Who, though his horses are mad,
If he raises his hand, is afraid and confused:
“For after all what is this, who is who?
And am I being hit or am I hitting you?”


The Legacy

The lit match illumined for a bit,
The room where I used to sit when I smoked.
The lit match burnt my fingertip
But it made no lasting impression;
A spark that illumined for a bit.

I used to sit, in the toilet in the dark.
I noticed that an old woman –long since dead-
Sat in the tub with her hands crossed
On her knees, looking at me,
“Has your mother sold my bracelets then?”
Her voice was shrill and echoed in the dark
“They were new and heavy; they were all pure gold;
Perhaps only just a century old; not an age to be sold.”

I remained as I were, quiet, and bit my lip
As the lit match burnt my fingertip
But made no lasting impression.
-I was thinking of other things;
Deliberately trying not to look in the mirror:
Anything but that! To be stared at by my self!
No, I fixed my glance on a spider's dance
I focused on the tap.
I tried to theorize about the dripping of the drops;
One by one as they crashed against the wet tile
I distracted myself, to pass the time, the while...

“Oh don’t be so coy, look at me little boy;
See this white dead hair that I wear on my head?
See the markings of a hundred winters etched?
Long gone? Is that what you say? All gone?”

I could sense her shifting about in the tub
Like a creature or an insect, trying to wriggle out,
Sliding back into the cup from which I drank.
She was there, I could taste her, and I shuddered.
She would crawl up my spine like a slippery lizard.

“This will not end, not like this,” I could sense
She was tired and frail but resolute. Out of the corner
Of my eye I nearly saw the mirror. Panic mounting!
Racing heart, beating drum, a dull continuous thud,
I put my left foot forward and the right itself followed
As I locked the door behind me and slid the key
Under the carpet. I'll never forget...
This was the last time that we met.


Best Before Served

I have this business enterprise
With Allan; who’s my friend and associate.
To accommodate his clientele
Underground.
He says, “The job is mean,
Beneath me, and unclean.”
I say, “It’s fine, I don’t mind,
‘Cause you see I treat people so
The soil don’t get lodged between their teeth:
I wrap ‘em up in long white sheets;
And they all resemble candlesticks;

Fresh flowers next to their tombstones keep
For a day or two…and then, well…
Dogs dig up their dead old bones and dart off.
I chase ‘em, hat in hand, around graves and holes
Puffing, out of breath, with each step;
And they jog away, ears pricked, smiling at my nerve,
Unbothered really…frankly so am I…
The dogs and I, we’re much the same.
Except that I bury what they dig up again.
I read to them the words of etiquette,
The book that says they mustn’t rob the dead
But they tilt their heads and bark at me,
Their eyes don’t seem to follow what I read.

In summer time I moisten dirt, you see,
With my own sweat. And they drink of it.
I scrape the frost when winter settles in,
Inside a grave I have dug, for someone else;
Lying there, staring out at me,
Like a stiff, dead dog,
I find a dog lyin’ stiff, every now and again.

I lie quite still, I lie compulsively:
“Nice meeting you, do come again.”
In my bed, I pretend I am dead, like our clientele.
I live in boxes; everywhere there’s one
Or two. I keep no count (of course I do.)
I mean it’s not easy to be at ease
I never know when to say, “Thank you or Please;
May I; Shall we; I love you; that will be all Mary.”
And there’s a time -with every nine I stitch-
For one more and another; they keep on rolling ‘em in
While the dogs from the windows keep staring in,
Tongues hanging, slobbering over the ledge;
Large, brown, happy dogs, not even black,
-They’ve got no sense of occasion…
And yet so cheeky, or, perhaps, who knows?
My job is not to know. I just do as I’m told.

He says, “Someday you’ll be a client too.”
It’s true! That Allan never lies to you.
He don’t lie, it’s right but then again hey…
Who knows who the customer really is!
Those who pay or those who eat for free?
And they stare and await, being served by me.



The Traffic Jam

On that dog day’s barking end,
Before it trailed into a howl,
With its tail between its legs, and shuffled off into night,
If she, that lady, in her rolled down window
On that colourfully clogged and miserable street,
[With the Lead-Free smoke:
Like a dead town's ghost, hovering over us all
Monitoring patiently our progress
And the masked surgeon's surgery,
As we by-passed an artery into the heart of the city],
Had only felt how it stung;
What her sight meant to me, and how it stung,
Then who would not, from a height, drop himself to his death?
But such a one as has lost all of hope...
Or has yet to fall in love,
And the fragrance of life has not escaped from his breath,
On the wings of a mad probability...
[What if... And if so! Then so on and so forth...]
Like a dream, wherein sense has been muffled by the sound;
Overpowered, overcome, and then drowned,
Defeated in its entirety.
Outside, and from within,
By the din of the traffic

At night, when it all dimmed down
And the noise had receded and proceeded with
The process of licking its wounds, curled up in a corner,
Leaving but a few marks of the scuffle behind;
I thought of my progress thus far:
Triumphed over by a sense of my sin,
A small child -bullied by a lobster-
Clawed-red, ashamed of my own skin.

Children

Tell us what it’s like to stand in between
Two long legs, and to find, from one side, coming down,
Reaching for your hand, another hand, just like yours,
Only bigger, fleshier, moist and warm,
And knowing that at any time letting go of the ground
Only means you would swing by your arm,
For those mighty oaken fingers never slip. Not at all!
Tell us what it’s like to be small,
To believe.
To be young, and never fall in love, but be loved
Feel a feather float on down from a tree up above
Be a bird sitting ruffled, fluffed up in winter
To be naked and yet warm -be bathed by your mom-
To sleep. In spite of it all!
Tell us of 'it all' but never speak -not like us.
Let us guess what it’s like from the colour of your cheeks,
From the smudges on your face and the scratches on your knees,
From the brightness of your eye
And the laughters in your smile,
Playing for a while and eating what you eat…
Filling in the gaps in between missing teeth;
Tell us what you like; tell us why it’s always sweet.
Tell us what is life; what it feels like;
The unshakeable security of looking up
And feeling small,
And looking down, for the best spot to crawl on…
And knowing, for sure, that one day,
You shall be tall
And all will be well.

Mistrust

The Suspicious mind turns fingers sticky, and thinks
Thin thoughts that look like jam but stink like butter
Gone bad; rancid opinions wrap around,
And trap unheeding insects in gleaming webs
Where they are slowly taken down;
Their tough skin peeled and the kernel within,
Laid bare, corrupted, exposed to malignancy
And sunk in unnatural thoughts.

Meanwhile, we the devout,
We in our soft-backed recliners send our prayers out;
Lock them there and make sure the cat-flap is shut tight.
And they scratch at the wood and they cry in the night.
But find no way inside.
"These hearts are closed, we are indisposed."
Once you have fallen prey to the Suspicious mind,
You are a ghost.