THE RETURN OF DUM MAARO DUM
( for Driftwood )


She dances
upon her tippy toes

upon my toes
whirling 'bout the room

to DUM MAARO DUM
she my little Bollywood queen.

"Again...again....again!" she squeals
mad with childish delight.

Asha sings to us
and we...dance!

Sunlight throws itself
at our feet.

We dance upon it.

Summer gasps
holds its breath.

There is nothing but
the music....and us!

She is all
of three

screaming: "Bollywood me...Bollywood me!"

"This...won't....get the dinner done!"
screams Mum above the fun.

The record screechs
and scratches ...ouch...off!

I cut cuecumbers
into tiny tiny pieces.

Tilly washes spinach and lettuce.

But when Mum
goes to answer the phone

it's her best chum
she will be hours

we sneak Asha
back into the kitchen.

The return of. . .

"Dum maaro dum
Mit jaaye gham
Bolo subaha shaam
Hare Krishna hare Krishna hare Krishna Hare Ram!"

Somewhere out there a baby cries in a room full of white and black equipment that screechs with it
or rather beeps
and somewhere out there a child falls and scrapes his knee and he looks down to the blood and he feels pain
its his first memory
somewhere out there a pubescent girl bleeds for the first time in her life and she's scared and she thinks she's going to die because
no one ever told her this would happen
no one ever said a word
but she's heard of internal bleeding before
and somewhere out there a teenage boy takes in a huge whiff of his first marijuana cigarette
and the room spins and he sees the decor
fake flowers posted on fake walls of four
and he passes the joint and his friends they all laugh and starts to smile and they all go back
to the time when they were young when life was filled with one part wonder and one part great and nothing ever hurt
not a single thing
the grass feels good, it feels like summer and smells like nothing they've ever smelled before
and somewhere out there a twenty one year old girl screams but he continues doing what he was raised to do
after all you never take no for an answer
whether you're getting a job, selling a car, or *******
and he **** and she cries and life is lit on fire
the summer too hot
the last winter was far too cold after all
so when the earth burns up inside this girl
she only thinks about that time when she was younger and nothing hurt
not a single thing
and the only blade she had to ever see was green and in her front lawn
somewhere out there an old man coughs and his son knows that cough too well because
his wife had the same one
and words fall from his lips with each beat of his heart
and those words turn to tears in the son's eyes and
form words in his lips
and if God is asking permission to take this life
he isn't taking no for an answer
but the old man doesn't care
the old man knows where he's going and
he can't help but smile
but right here i'm lying to myself on a keyboard
the cadence of the clicks creating catastrophes for people I've never met