Keeping Score

My cluttered words now flap

As truce-flags in dry wind.

Crawling towards hope that

Dare might mean

They stutter and falter

And cringe into a blank

That leaves my page unimproved.

Scalding in unremitting heatwave at noon

I stagger with soles now pasted in pitch

With a tongue that is parched to the root.

Born and bred amidst rubbish and grime

These my droplets of void that’ll keep

Scores of loss of disposable hopes. 

Unanswered

Too long a service of patience and pain

Breeds new cacti in gardens of heart

That wear their winters all year.

Tired with the crumblings of leaves through my valves,

I puzzle for the breezes of spring that’ll blow

Never now even for a week.

Should I still beg more patience and strength

To last my hours still oozing with blood,

Or elixir of perfection, well beyond reach

That’ll mould me a god out of clay?

Blistered and bled, I stagger through the sand

And scatter as twigs in nor’wester land. 

Behind the Market

Beady little eyes,

Now jostle in the den

And wait for the morsels

Or gills that’ll drop

For moments of insatiate claws.

Furry little limbs, now poised with rage

In primordial struggles in republic of hate.

Running along napkins of Mcdelicious sauce,

They scatter through the packs of Subways in trash

And gobble our leftover of Domino’s in haste.

Sipping through my can of diet-loving fizz,

I pause and then rush to my Prada in sale.