The delta fails to drain the monsoon’s storm
and fetid wetness saturates the air.
Kolkata’s roads are flooded filthy warm;
the ***** water’s waist deep everywhere.

We leave the inundated coastal plain
and fly to Dimapur: our journey stops.
My aunt and I must wait while we obtain
the area restricted pass: time clots.

Detained in an hotel we watch the roads,
from our imprisoning rooftop strewn with junk,
we see the rickshaws carrying their loads,
like toiling metal yellow beetles; cyberpunk.

Our documents arrive, we're on the way
on up the jungle river's steep roadway.

In musky bamboo jungle, damp and tall,
a wet and humid monsoon scents the air.
The forest hears a hornbill’s gocking call
its woodland eyes are watching and aware.

There, soldiers shoot Kalashnikovs and spread
a cordite quick collateral sharp death.
She wears a Naga shawl warm, black and red,
and watchful says a prayer under her breath.

My centre’s there where tribal logdrums beat
among the soft cicadas nighttime trill
as fireflies dance their tango down the street
and brightly coloured birds sing loud and shrill.

My most important person waits for me
under a shady verdant alder tree.

A mendacious murmuration
  of black pixels dance a fractal fandango
  against the pale pink sky
telling you that all is well with the world.
A susurration of complacency–
  above the exhaust-scented streets
  of Birmingham’s melting asphalt–
whispers, “Don’t worry,
ignore the heatstroke starlings
dropping from the sky
onto viscous pitch dark bitumen”.

Miley and I walk down the street
      ignoring the cannabis scented clouds:
      she stops – sniffing every urinated message,
      occasionally leaving a reply.

My dog passes the laughing gas canisters,
    polystyrene boxes and broken glass
    searching for discarded bones, bread and tissue paper
      to eat, rip or claw.

We stroll through the park
      once yellow smiling daffodils grin brown and withered.
Squirrels multiply – fecund rats in the trees,
      Miley too slow to control the rodent population.

Despite urban desolation
      look harder:
        see the green canopy
            grass, birds,
              sometimes even a butterfly.

The world isn’t dead –
      we still have time.

We know that
Round the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran
  but what secrets does that sentence slyly hide from our eyes?

Who is the ragged rascal that ran round the rugged rock?
  Ralph or Mary, Alfred or Freda?

Was the rock
  amid the sandy ozone odoured, shelly blue roaring sea shore
  or the languishing lavender scented purple pastures of Provence?

Does the rock think
  why is this ragged rascal interrupting my rest,
  pausing my Requiem in Pace with their irreverent running,
  circumnavigating the penumbra of my circumference?

Is it sand or grass that feels
  the feet of the ragged rascal running fast
  or the rugged rock, whose repose the rascal wrecked?

Why is the ragged rascal running
  perspiring to meet a perfumed maid or prurient boy
  or play some fiendish prank of trick or treat on foe or friend?

Will we ever realize our desire to perceive
  why the ragged rascal ran round the rugged rock?

And if the intensions of the ragged rascal become intelligible:
  did Peter Piper taste the peck of pickled pepper that he picked
needs investigation.

An oyster’s grit accumulating
new layers of aragonite
and calcite, contributing, plating
the growing bright translucent white
and crystalizing hard, pellucid
wan pearl – that forms within the mucid
molluscan slimy dank inside –
a creamy gem is calcified.

Diaphanous and lustrous jewel
or septic and necrotic stone
that’s like a canker which has grown
into an opulent fat spherule?
A pearl forms round a piece of grit,
my childhood at the heart of it.