another day

 

Somedays the bandages are unwrapped, for miles and miles, so many, I forget what lies within

Its not the healing grafting kind of nick, new skin on old, its the kind that stays exactly the same, an edifice on time, a Great Wall, if you will

You may see some erosion, some weathering, but I forgot how beautiful were the neem trees growing beside, I forgot the old singing mosque and these bylanes, full of birds and smells and plastic shops

But thats all in passing, after all, The Wall is the centerpiece, its the caption on the brochure, clenched in my fist

It isnt, of course, the right thing to do, or the wrong that matters, its the thing that takes the most courage, despite the frozen fear condensing in the corner of your eye,

Courage cannot lead you false, its always dragging you to a mirror and a bright light

Today I was able to look, without flinching, I think ill call it progress

 

a moving target

 

between sharp reflections on the ceiling, from car-trains, flashing into incomplete night, ideas melt and ebb, waiting for dilemma and nirvana to meet, meanwhile

there is the changing of the drapes, the trash and the heat. the bargain of a day exchanged for a minute on the street, take it as you will

there is also, the marketplace, with the hungry hourglass, built with pieces of my soul, and many more, built to last, they say, but human with a hole

and then the carnival of magic shows, karpooram fumes everywhere, sweet and obscuring and faintly divine,

the doors, slamming up and down an endless corridor, the chaos of unromantic art, that forever comes and goes

and of course, no mistaking, narcissus and the translucent snake, trailing ashes in his glittering wake

renaissance is no longer the bat-signal in the sky, I drag it thread by snapping thread from little particles of moving light outside, wash it clean of a million clinging illusions, before I can make it mine

and yet, the destination, hasn't changed, it remains worthwhile

 

still life on the wayside

 

there must have been
a living road among these ruins
a day must have dawned
to laughter and proud ribbons
today the sun grows relentless
on a perfumed hidden corpse

the grass has promise
the brush, trampled and torn
is still alive
the gravel is still marked
with footsteps, fleeing by
without a compass,
or a balancing pole

one day comes,
a torchbearer will slip
set the remains aflame
a brushroot weeps
on gravel each day, hopeful
that tears will work
that feet will learn
that water won't burn

 

it was a dark and stormy night

 

mice blazed trails across mousepads, tweets buzzed and swarmed like a curse of locusts, "WTFs" were carried like torches on mobile screens, facebook updates arced across the burning sky, sound systems screamed with death metal, ipods vibrated with playlists of pure destruction, spam mails fell like torrential rain down garbage shutes

graphics cards inhaled memory like water in a desert, fraglimits were reached in record time, missions were completed without a morsel of food consumed, dragons fell whimpering to level 20 parties

multiple rounds of lethal opinions were fired at soldiers and innocent bystanders alike, governments toppled down narrow treacherous popularity polls, celebrities were revealed all the way to their exoskeletons, public images splatted like flies on a windshield

the nightmare child slept, with a half-closed eye