- Vol. 09
- Chapter 11
MY POETRY TURNING GREY
I saw someone dressed in black
disappearing into the wood;
I saw my poetry turning grey
and promptly trampled underfoot.
Then the binmen went on strike,
and I saw the world a conflagration
of smells, curses and unalienable rights.
Lies were celebrated,
and the wind blew more holes
in my already-porous soul.
I looked at the Romaine lettuce
growing in one of my garden pots,
and measured the girth of the baby leaves,
to decide what each one was worth.
And then I heard wings flap:
it was a summons to court with a booby-trap.
I tried and explained myself
with arguments worse than anaemic,
and the jury laughed; and they smacked.
“Go and start learning again,”
the judge delivered her kindly advice
and dismissed my inconsequential quest.
The tiredness overwhelmed me, but I held
my exhaustion on the palm of my left hand,
pondering how the leopard chewed up the news
while refusing to change its spots.
MY POETRY TURNING GREY
As the three moons turned stubbornly crescent,
I remembered somebody
not so long ago said,
“When our exploration ends
(Or wasn’t it “when the explosions stop”?),
we shall arrive where we began
and there we'll see everything afresh” ―
But why would anyone wish to believe that?
Whence I realised, my lofty goal
was never anything other than
merely going round in circles,
and even that, was probably at a stretch.