Siddhartha Gautama saw
– one old
– one ill
– one corpse
and knew his path must change.
I saw a naked child
stomping in the mud
and knew my path must change.
To slog through the mud
is the way of sufferers.
To stomp like you’re in a marching band
is the way of joy.
[National Poetry Month: Poem #16]
I remember those gray days.
Drizzle. Mist.
Gray cloud bellies hung low,
scratched by church spires.
A cloak of damp,
damp cold.
Shoulders hunched.
Eyes on glistening pavement.
A world closing in.
Burying one in gray.
[National Poetry Month: Poem #15]
Taken at Bannerghatta Biological Park in Bangalore
What’s a tiger but a bright, orange cat
who naps all day but doesn’t get fat?
How does he stay muscled and lean
when he eats and eats and sleeps between?
Sure, now and again, he’ll chase a gazelle.
Unlike my cat, who’s trained me with a bell
to deliver food to a bowl right under her nose
lest I hear the pitiful yowl of hunger throes.
But when chasing prey, tigers never run long.
He picks slow and weak over fast and strong.
And you’ll never see him run in the mid-day sun,
and he’ll always be napping when his meal is done.
[National Poetry Month: Poem #14]
Hey, there, Mr. Millipede.
Shall I judge you by word or deed?
If by word, you’re big, stinky liar.
I counted 200 feet, not one higher.
“1000 feet” is pure exaggeration.
I say with no intended defamation.
By deed, now, that’s a different story.
You deserve all the accolades and glory.
I trip and stumble on just my two feet.
With 200, I’d never make it across the street.
How can your tiny brain keep feet moving?
Does each step need pre-approving?
[National Poetry Month: Poem #13]
It’s a post-apocalyptic scene.
Until you see the flower floor.
Concrete walls, bare but for paan stains.
Looking like a fresh massacre.
A murderous rampage
written in shotgun spatters.
A pack sits, rhythmically rocking,
hands mindlessly at work.
But with their backs to you,
you can’t see they’re stringing garlands.
Looks like the junky fidgets
of a Zombie horde at rest.
The impulse to tip-toe past, rationally quieted.
Then you peer over the rail to the flower floor.
The flower floor is brightness.
The visual gravity of oranges and yellows
exerts such an aesthetic pull on the eyes
that one can’t see any sign
of dystopian dreariness.
[National Poetry Month: Poem #12]
they stole her soul
put it in a hole
&
covered it with steaming shit
from the demon’s latrine pit
but they fouled up
it woke the pup
who knew a soul could vaporize
&
in a steam cloud it would rise
&
that breathed in by Cerberus
it’d make the beast more murderous
[National Poetry Month: Poem #11]
You’ll never see a guy
shake his fist at the sky
and let fly the impassioned cry,
“I just want to fix typewriters.”
Some dream of escaping life in the hoi polloi,
pretending to be a princess, wearing a tiara toy,
but no one applies for the post of “whipping boy.”
[To take the beatings for said mischievous princess.]
And should you flush your ring down the toilet bowl,
you’re on your own, bless your plague-fated soul,
cause you’ll not find a tosher to jump down the sewer hole.
[Unless your time machine is set for London, circa 1850.]
When I look back at the sea of me’s.
I grin with glee and I’m quite pleased,
feeling totally at ease…
Because they’re all happily obsolete.
[National Poetry Month: Poem #10]
[National Poetry Month: Poem #9]
blocks of rubble
corners & edges eroded round
bas reliefs dulled
&
adorned by jagged cracks
once the Earth’s most massive city
in its day London was a hamlet
thriving,
dying,
&
swallowed
infinitely patient arboreal adversaries
claimed the light
drilling down into cracks
making chasms
to set roots
strangler figs, literally,
strangled
figureheads
[National Poetry Month: Poem #8]
Lumbering lunatic slogs
through the moonlit woods.
If it comes upon a farmhouse,
it’ll eat
a chicken or
a goat or
a girl or
a boy.
They’ll find only buttons and belt buckles,
and maybe loose feathers.
It’s a monster in scale and disposition.
[National Poetry Month: Poem #7]
