Spent time with a new friend today
I asked her if I could help
This is what she had to say
"Why yes Dear, take me over to the concierge desk
I just arrived here to stay"
I pushed her wheelchair over to the nurses station
Where her finger pointed me to go, as we headed that direction
She told me she heard this was a four star Hotel*
She needed to get her suite number to know
Her spirit was exuberant
Full of delight
It made my mind wander
Perhaps God invented Alzheimer's
To protect our minds from fright
I remember my Papa
How towards the end He would forget that he was in pain
It was quite a blessing
*To be "insane"

It is the story of every generation.
Water flows down the Thames, witness
to the same hubris. We are different.

We want to rebel. We want to be
offensive. But it the same story
all over again. All rebellions die.

Name a revolution that does not
crown a new class of overlords.
Names change, institutions remain.

We've had religion. We've had many a
One God. Enlightenment. Democracy.
The Commune and Market economy.

But the double-barreled
name is still in charge of the purse.
Some beaten man still mends our loo.

When we bare our chest, still
the one word that's not erased
is cruelty. in every kind and flavour.

To love another, as one does ones own
is still the grail we are after. All
chalices are poisoned in the end.

The day when the jasmines embossed on the glass
were stained, nobody ventured into dust-laden streets
from where even the day was retreating.
Shadows, grew tall, four-headed monsters in the lamps
flickering from all over. Chasing a form, I ran
like a child after a severed kite, into the eye of the storm.
Bare footed, numb to pain, all the shards of broken
glass did not matter. At the end of the alley
disfigured receptacles, no doubt dead, lay greeting.
The sirens blared but I did not hear. The oaks
were falling by tomes, but  I did not hear. When
eagles were all that haunted this deathly hamlet,
I did not hear. When at the end of the alley
I fell to my feet and my hands were dyed red
from touching my feet, my eyes were too moist to see.