Is a poem a song you speak?
Is it the music of the soul?
Is it a random, over-analysed hypothesis?
Does it have meaning as a whole?

Does anybody care,
About the words we post on sites?
The pain that makes good poetry,
Does it make us parasites?

Do we **** the blood of sorrow,
Till its bitter juice is done?
A ton of bloated leeches,
Belching back the pain we've won?

Is my anguish worse than yours,
Because I write it like a song?
Do you care about my heart,
Because my sonnet reads so long?

Are my poems just graffiti,
On the tombs of poets dead?
Is a poem really better,
When it's torment that's been said?

Butterflies like flying songs,
Leave trails deep inside,
Fluttering with nervous haste.

Ashen hair encircles her head,
And a face that could do with a wash.
Yet above the chipped teeth and the grimy brown hands,
Sits, throned, a crown of gold.

A waltzing skirt, trimmed with ribbons of dust,
A bruise of an amethyst hue,
She mutters the stories to ***** grey walls,
The girl with a crown of gold.

The peasants awake, splitting heads, withered throats,
From their bedbugs and blankets and beer.
The princess stands firm, she will not be moved
From her crack-mirrored bathroom seat.

The peasants are worse than usual this morn,
But you have to expect that from them.
The mirror reflects, in its own shattered way
The torn, crushed crown of gold.

There once was a prince, in this faery land.
A baby too brave for his good,
A trip away, up the silent back stairs.
                             -
They can't batter his new crown of gold.

The streets try to drag her back into the world,
But she only sees carpets of red.
In a fairytale land where no evil is seen,
Sometimes paper's more precious than gold.

Dusted with gold, colours wheeling,
Threads reaching into a sun,
Precious handwoven rugs from Mumbai,
Individual, divine, only one.

A foreigner orders a carpet.

So a carpet graces the road.

On a throne made of barrows and money,
But a hand stops the vivid-hued load.

Covered in dust, wrinkles stealing
Irreplaceable youth from his bones,
Worthless mendicant soul in Mumbai,
Stretches out towards hope with a moan.

A dollar could take him to life,
As his cup stretches out for some bread,
Yet, the cloth priced more highly than life,
Trundles past, and it leaves him for dead.

The ship chugs through horizons,
With its costly woven load,
Whilst a bag of bones expires,
In the dust, beside a road.