after a shamefully long haitus...

... a new poem

This poem

This poem will start simple
and speak straight to you
because you wrote it yourself
but
you will forget this poem
as soon as you've heard it.

This is the poem you
tried to write at sixteen
and would have at thirty
if not busy buying a living.

This poem will change nothing.
This poem was written in Bombay.
This poem is a road
you can either walk down
or rename.

This poem has seen death.
In fatal railway track crossings
and exploded first class carraiges,
Blood on riot born swords
and from every day
mosquito bites of indifference.

This poem has cried itself to flooding,
drowned in its own tears
and still lived to complain
about the city's under-performing gutters.

This poem is sunlight
and life giving rain. It
rises up and shakes it's
filth covered fist at the sun
laughing at its own bruises.

This poem is dead. It
wrote itself on the back of
an unencashed compensation cheque
passed from father to son.

This poem is ordinary, thats
why it is beautiful.
This poem is breath- sweet
smog coloured concrete scented
breath, the scent thrown off
by huge metal animals
in a steel and brick forest.

This poem would be ordinary
if it were beautiful
with burgundy dyed similies
and streaky blond allusions
but this poem is bald.
It uses none of it's
own words, instead it uses
ten rupee roadside words
stuffed in pavs, with onions
and two types of chutney.

This poem is washed over
in the surf of a thousand
other poems whose sentences
clamber over it like children
reaching for view of the tamasha
and yet its shoulders stay strong.

This poem will win no awards
This poem is unoriginal.
This poem comes without intervals
or toilet breaks, this poem
would be longer if the neighbours
didn't play-their-music-so-fucking-loud

This poem is a thief.
It sips your sweetest dreams,
gorges on your laughter,
wins your children's adoration
fucks your wife, your husband
and leaves you to navigate
those empty afternoon hours alone.

This poem is always simple
and speaks straight through you
but
you always forget this poem
as soon as you've heard it
because you write it yourself.