Deal

"Oranges are expensive all around this year."

When the fruit seller said this,

I quietly accepted his price.

No, I am not so naive

That I wasn't infected

By a glimmer of suspicion.

But my apprehension about being duped was negligible

When faced with the fear

Of losing my ability to trust.  

First published in Madness Muse Press, 11 Jun 2018.

Heroes must fall

No room for those who perform
"nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love"
And, at times,
Are human enough to err

We'd rather sculpt heroes,
Carry them high above our heads
So we can pretend we can't reach them,
Can't do what they do.

As the burden grows heavier,
And we, as they,
Falter under the weight
We drop them by the wayside as sinners.

First published in Madness Muse Press, 11 Jun 2018.

Modern day presidential

Hands,

Hands are crucial.

Hurricane hands

Grabbing pussies,

    beautiful pieces of ass

Building walls

Tearing through gloves,

    insisting on getting themselves dirty

Trashing women cards

Fidgeting around nukes

Ruling the world

Rocking own cradle

First published in Madness Muse Press, 11 Jun 2018.

Crushed

The sun trapezed over my knuckles

When I picked up warm wheat

By fistfuls

Put out to dry by my grandmother

After it was washed and scrubbed.

It would leave in me 

Heat, imprint, smell.

Now our packaged flour

Slips right through

The gaps between my fingers.

Those birthed by the earth 

Do not hold each other any more.

We maintain sanitized contact

Mediated by steel and plastic.

First published in Madness Muse Press, 11 Jun 2018.

Against the dying of the light

When empty rhetoric boasts
You have to brace immodesty
And raise a few toasts
To a nobody like yourself, and to the noble souls punished for their quiet honesty.

xxx

i have
cried
ached
sweated
bled
for my country.

everything,
from the calluses on my feet
to the etched sun on my face,
bear witness to it.

and while i realise
that all i did were selfish acts performed for myself
because so many of our interests are tied together,
and while i know,
it is a mere drop
from the ocean
i am capable of giving, hope to give,

I shall not stand at ease and pay attention
As you spout forth on how I should love my country, how I should bay for others' blood to prove the purity of mine
But remind you that I have held by breath to be able to hear its cries
When you were busy talking down to it.

First published in Madness Muse Press, 11 Jun 2018.

Reboot

We click
To make the red
Go away.

It does.
Attaches itself
To us.

We become
A quivering minefield.

Do not touch.
We will disintegrate.
Take you down
With us.

***Memory of being still
While being held
Successfully erased
From disk***

First published in Peacock Journal, May 2018.

Multiplex

Where the restlessness of our narrow gullies finds respite 
As we breathe in the wintry air locked inside the cinema screen 
Lulling ourselves

Into believing that we, too, residents of the third world,
Struggle with the doubts and dilemmas of the first world,
That beyond scarcity-illness-religion
We are part of the subtle nuances of fine sentiment and existentialism.

First published in Peacock Journal, May 2018.