Yonder was a Wednesday noon,

The October sky,

Up high

Pastels of blue, pinks

And golden hues

She beamed up high,

A siren of the 50s.

 

Her jewel brewed brine from

A frail body of mine,

A body played by

Life and her wits

To bits of veil,

Bought for a better marriage.

 

The heat balmed my flesh,

Melancholy marred by monotony,

I saw the grey craters of a rising moon.

She, a faded pearl of the night,

Masking her golden nemesis of the sky

In beauty, worth, poetry and more.

 

I’ve walked down this murky path alone,

Several times before, several times after now.

A shack that was once a home,

With no more yellow canaries

To tweet me a goodbye.

 

My mind grumbled along

The stones on which I

Tumbled,

To balance my youthful body

I immure my soul of its own.

 

Oh! Longing for a downpour of rains

To wet my body, to whet my appetite.

To slip down the road

And dance away the pains,

To live on this earth

Over the moon!

As my muses knotted along the road

To twisted truths,

Of friends, strangers and ghosts;

Trying to keep my left

Yet, to be reminded

by honks and bonks and the dust in my conks.

To enact a life,

We chose to know

And chose to see,

I chanced upon this small brown man,

Frowned with age, bound with bondage

To a friend that

Slowly feasted on his flesh!

 

A midget of a man,

Seized at the corners by shun.

Neglect of love, neglect of fate,

Pulled down by the grimaces

Of a thousand faces

Known, unknown,loved and disliked,

That saw not beyond

A receding man in a yellow rag.

 

He looked like a wild cat

Out of the huge yellow box,

Fishing out a pack

Of unopened rice.

Rich man’s waste, a leper’s joy tonight.

 

And with the smile of a child

Whose eyes held delight

Like a novice to the fair,

He squat on the ground

Delirious with his find,

Nimbly guarding his small feast

With little worm nibbled knobs,

Which once held, stroked and played

Every face of love!

 

No more in his world was

You anymore than I,

Glutton gnawing in the glory.

Hands on rice,

Rot on hands,

The eyes that watched him

He uncalled for.

 

For he, who woke up to a sunrise and

Roamed the streets under this sky,

Unclad feet, uncared for

In the heat and cold alike.

Senseless.

Baseless.

Comfortably numb.

No random thoughts, to play on.

Nobody to own

And to be owned.

A stone for a bed

And the shadows of night

To blanket him.

 

I, a slave of my rants,

A queen of supposed laughters,

A loud woman who pitied none but me,

Heavily rimmed eyes

Now punched by a blinding light.

 

The sun finally rose in the daze of

An unsettled mind

to finally realise,
As it sank into the sky

Dropping a mirage of,

What is true?

What is false?