how do you bump off a poem
you suffocate it
with superfluous words
and stuffy grammar
for it cannot
inhale the pretentious fumes
of a smouldering thesaurus
in indelicate hands
or chop off stanzas
with a fountain machete
watch the words dissolve
into immutable discord
a jigsaw puzzle
that’s no longer a picture
you stab it
with the drab discipline
of a force-fit
two-bit
rhyming scheme
and leave it gasping
for a breath of free verse
or strangle it
with a taut wire
of ineffable material
imbue it
with playful profundity
and everything else poets do
except the crucial dash
of yourself
yes these are
the standard
operating procedures
in the do-it-yourself manual
on poemslaughter
but the sure-fire way
to **** a promising poem
is to never write it
because once born
a poem never truly dies
even upon mutilation
it is only relegated
to literary life-support
until
a chance rearrangement
of potent words
in the fevered imagination
of a sentient being
infuses it with
a lust for life
i’m alive
it’ll proclaim
jump out of
its feather bed
and quietly
mutter to itself
i’m still alive
Jul 31, 2014
Jul 31, 2014 at 12:52 PM UTC
a talkative beast
spewing half truths
and half lies
confident as the kid
in your class who
always raised his hand
to mouth
the wrong answer
a kettle on the boil
whistling absurdities
shrill as
a woman who
has waited an hour
at the rusty tap
with a blue plastic bucket
to find the last drop
trickle away
a menagerie of vultures
salivating in unison
at moist corpses
in the street and
swooping on the dead
for a quote
like eager students
waiting for exam results
to be plastered
on the notice board
a mercurial mistress
who breaks
a different bed everyday
for limp men desiring
a high-decibel
performance for
a two paisa act
culminating
in a contrived
******
an electronically enabled
carrion crew
reducing pillage
to inches of column
on newsprint
a veritable feast
isn’t it
with Marie biscuits
and steaming tea
there is no escaping
this monster
of many heads
and one tongue
for it whispers
a worldview
its gait
insidious and stealthy
as it pounces
on sheep who
then bleat
its platitudes
as the truth
and nothing but
the truth
Jul 30, 2014
Jul 30, 2014 at 6:18 AM UTC
A cursed affliction of the heart
A human condition that drives us hither
And thither chasing a ghostly calling
On a restless search for mirages
We are all actors
Playing our role
Said a great sonnet writer
We use to quote platitudes
But what of those who wander
A crossroad of diverging futures
Where one role does not satisfy
Their boundless hopes and desires
A poet one moment
A grave digger the next
Who shovels mud in the darkness
And finds meaning in the light
A role fit for a novel maybe
Or at least a bad play
Starring unknown faces
Gesticulating to an empty theatre
Some find solace behind the pages
Of a tattered copy of Crime and Punishment
Leading a vicarious life of alcoholics and whoremongers
And some become what they don’t read
Blessed is the mind whose devotion
Is pure, untainted by the spectre
Of what is and what could be
Charting a singleminded road that plods on
To heights heavenward
To places unexplored
In a narrow field of vision
Towards a sunlit horizon
And not be stuck in the bogs
Of indecisive action
Of halfhearted measures
In a dreary haze of possibilities
But it’s only a cosmic joke one would say
For why did the Almighty in his wisdom
Make a world so vast and beautiful
Our ambitions so conspicuously lofty
And our fleeting lives so very inadequate?
Jul 16, 2014
Jul 16, 2014 at 8:30 AM UTC