This summer has been too long,
yes, too long.
It gets warmer as days pass by
like the warmth of urine spreading across freshly -pissed on patch of earth.
No scent of rain to cheer my soul,
souls need cheering, you know.
Only aridness, aridness everywhere
Melded with the complacency of hope that this would soon be gone,
Can you see the leaves of the Bael trees turn tinder
while still being part of the trees they are born into,
Our own life is like that, we can’t see our hair gyrate into greyness while you are at it in the neck of woods,
I pick one of the wood apples, peer into the crack along the centre
as if it were the equator,
Its calm inside, no molten anger breaking out to split through the fault,
I rotate the hard fruit in my fingers, the ends don't meet, somewhere past midway the chink gives up
I try and sniff, the core smells pungent and wilted; Oh dear!
As you tread on, you begin to feel the fissures building around the heels like crenellations
and you register you are getting old.
Doves keep scooping for a drink of water
into the myriad of mirages scattered like cuckoo nests -
Mirages everywhere like ocean gauze in the midst of gloomy sea,
I feel pity as the mirages do not stay in one place, the images play catch me if you can,
shift position now and then that the birds can’t get at it,
From this distance I can’t observe the mortification building in the red ringed eyes of doves,
If I could
I would absolve ‘em of the sin of littering my mountain podium,
The doves have small asses for the volume of shit they turn out each day,
It takes three weeks of torrent to wash up
and give the portico the new look that it deserves,
Ah! Wonderful to revert my mind to the monsoon days
while yet being forced to watch the foliage spread
All over the gaping earth,
light and dark Turkish incongruities like a piece of done away carpet,
Brown does not add proprietary nor lend sense, the corners of the carpet are clinodactyly,
One day the four corners may curl up and smother life on the planet.
No holes on earth to swallow this situation,
the earth does not swallow anything, that is the situation we are in.
We wait for the summer to end, nothing wrong in waiting,
waiting has been our forte all along we didn’t know,
Unwittingly we wait without discovering what we wait for,
From birth to death, this is one of life’s unsung tragedies.
We put out our tongues to see if we can trace rainbow hues in our slobber,
We wipe our brows and measure with bleary eyes
the drops of sweat diminish in our fingers with each swab.
These are interesting things you do while waiting,
never miss out - remember waiting is living., do not complain
We think about complaining to God, but desist as an act of kindness,
We know He is elsewhere pissing where no one is allowed to watch,
But we can feel the steam,
for somewhere clouds are building up and we are assured of His presence, we feel good about it.
The summer gets warmer, the leaves a shade more tinder.
I begin to shed my clothes and get naked,
that is within my jurisdiction, to get naked.
Shedding clothes to take a wash in the pool in which large-headed tadpoles swim
fighting for space.
Any time the doors of Heaven might close kind of predicament. When I finish washing
most of the tadpoles would be dead,
They would be reborn in equal numbers tomorrow morning beating their tails.
Where are the frogs, where did they fuck, what sex enhancers did they use
These tadpoles keep coming back.
I advise the caramel-syrup woodpeckers not to dig holes in my heart,
they would find the inside empty,
I tell them instead to peck holes in the sky with their crests. The sky has no heart you see! And no blood.
Oh summer, spare me,
you can’t live in my sun-baked heart. Spare me.
Oh summer, please spare the maggots from dying because they eat like horses.
Oh long hot summer, can’t you see? Maggots have no legs, they can’t move to greener pastures,
Maggots eat where they are born, die where they lived
Where is the analogy?
The truth of our existence is limited by the extent of our geography,
To prove my point I get dialectical like one-eyed Indian Onager
Where is the black hole?
I am dying to see what it is.
Is it really black?
Is the black hole hot or cold?
There are more things in life than reason can offer.
Please do not lay me on the brown carpet when I die. I am too holy for that, and too lazy,
Oh summer! Go away before I am gone!
Author : Saranyan Bv
Saranyan Bv is a poet and short story writer who entered the realm of literature due to a stupid error. But loves being there!
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