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P Venugopal Jan 2016
Rub
A hooting whistle
on her full red lips, she books
me for wrong parking!

Burly constable,
sipping crimson lolipop,
mustachios bristling!
P Venugopal Jan 2016
Each time he slows bike,
spring blossoms, succulent fruits—
her coy, joyous hug!
cityscape haiku?
P Venugopal Jan 2016
The whole avenue unfurls before my eyes.
Buildings change shape.
Billboards, the letters of the alphabet.
Neon lights scream bedlam.
Men and women scurry hither and thither.
Faces change expression
in a swirling flux.
I looked at the scene through a wide angle lens
over a wide span of time.
Then zoomed into the particular.
P Venugopal Jan 2016
I hear the tolling of the bell,
the beating of the falcon’s wings...
I tremble expectant—
the steel claws
lifting me soaring into the clouds weightless swinging
electrified…
P Venugopal Jan 2016
Sometimes I am as eloquent
as a tomb in a merry park.
Revelers fall silent in my presence.
And when they walk away,
their footsteps on the gravel path,
dumb with forebodings!

At other times I am a wild lily
that had escaped the gardener’s notice,
waltzing with the roses and dahlias,
to the pitch and fall of the breeze.

It disconcerts...
to be thus
conspicuous.
P Venugopal Jan 2016
My gills flap shut and open,
lips pouting,
blowing bubbles, swirling
to the surface, going
plop, plop…

I twirl my tail, stalling,
fins on thin ether groping,
unsure where, what, when, why, how—
glass-eyed,
trying to remember—
who?
If you give intense attention to a fish, you become the fish.
P Venugopal Jan 2016
Baffled I am all of a sudden—
Why I am I and not you?
Have you ever wondered, dear,
why you are you and not me?

I feel your fingers twined around mine,
your pulse throbbing on mine;
but I can’t say which is which—
beats diffuse as mist into mist.

You open the window and look outside—
I see through your eyes a solitary crow
high on the swaying sparkle of a tree,
preening its feathers warm in the sun. 
Its feathers all damp from last night’s rain,
it shakes its fluff in shuddering bouts—
oh how it itches, itches, beneath the wings!
How nice the sharp beak combing, scratching!

Baffled I am all of a sudden—
why I am I and not the crow?
Have you ever wondered, dear,
why you are you and not the crow?
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