How the so called poet stopped writing the so called poems!

The urge,
The obscene urge
To extract a ‘poem’
From anywhere
And everywhere
Had started to become nauseous.

It’d been coming for a while,
The urge, like a nouveau riche’s
Desperation to show off his wealth,
And the subsequent wrath towards the self.

The ‘poet’ first noticed it standing
Outside a chicken stall.
One among the chickens
Had been pulled out of the cage
And butchered.
A piece of the innards was thrown
To the cage, and the rest fluttered
And fluttered, eager to get their share.
The ‘poet’ assumed a ‘holy cow’ face
And pity the chickens’ unpardonable
Response to the tragic death of their comrade.

Then, one fine day the ‘poet’ got to know about
‘Thalaikoothal*’, blood oozed out of his heart for a while, suddenly
The ‘poet’ gleefully thought of cashing on the practice
Of killing mothers, fathers…, and settled down comfortably
In the evening at the favourite corner of his favourite watering hole nicely
Covered in a woolen sweater and cap in order to resist the November chill.
After a while the monk, the very old monk, told him what an asshole he had become.
Out of shame the ‘poet’ downed and downed the ‘monk’ till he couldn’t gulp anymore.
He paid the bill, caught an auto and proceeded home muttering to himself.

Constant knock on the door woke the ‘poet’ from his rum induced stupor the next day.
A woman and her teenaged daughter, all dressed up, were there at the door.
The woman explained why they were there at the ‘poets’ door; marriage of the daughter.
Despite her conditions, the daughter maintained an expression of dignity and humility.
The sleepy ‘poet’ shoved in the mother’s hand a 20 rupee note, closed the door and returned to bed. But sleep was adamant and unyielding. The rest of the day the ‘poet’ tried to figure out poverty rather than poetry and its thousands of manifestations, but didn’t reach anywhere.

Though, not quite sure when, it might be during one of those moments, the ‘poet’ realized that he no longer gets that high he used to get thinking about writing ‘poems’ and decided to put an end to it, forever.

*http://www.tehelka.com/story_main47.asp?filename=Ne201110Maariyamma.asp

Nocturnal conversations, overheard

Last night
As I tossed and
Turned in bed since
Sleep had deprived me of her luxuries
I overheard conversations from my bookshelf.

Dr.Ayyappa Paniker was asking Gregor Samsa,
“What trick is this?*” and chuckled, quite satisfied.
Harold Bloom was consoling an attention seeking Naipaul
While Anne Frank gleefully joined the man who shouted "Teresa."



* I’ve heard several stories about the late Dr. Ayyappa Panicker’s humour sense and ready wit. One of them was his asking his student Patrick while giving him a helping hand, ‘Patrick what trick is this?’, when the latter tripped over.

Calm

Like books on the shelf,
Holding all
The storms within
With stupendous dignity.

Healed!

'Is there anything
Wrong with your neck?’
Asked my friend.

‘No, no, why?’
And I craned my neck
To show that it’s fine.

Then, at that moment,
I realized that my sprained
Neck has been healed!

13

13 is not a number.
13 is the side view
Of a cat sitting
Expectantly in front
Of a closed door.

Expectantly like
Beggars or a humble
Lover. (Is ‘humble lover’
Redundant?)

Before we proceed
Any further I would
Like to have a word
With the sceptics.

Please do the exercise
Prescribed below
In parenthesis.

(Tilt 13 to your left,
A 90 degree tilt)

We have this bad
Habit of embellishing
Anything and everything.

Thus we have cornices
And platforms on top
And bottom of 1.

When I say 1
I mean a vertical line
Nothing less, nothing more.

And 3;
3 should have a horizontal
Line on top, then a connecting
Slash, and then a bootylicious
Bottom, just like Shakuntala,
The Steatopygiac
Damsel of Kalidasa.

13, my friends,
Is not a number.
13 is the side view
Of a cat sitting
Expectantly in front
Of a closed door.

Anticipation

Raincoat in the saddlebag
Helmet on the head and a
Pack of ‘moods’ in the wallet.