Inventories from the Wasteland | Rony Nair

The deepest woods bear pathways. Twinning up over “Welcome” boards;
department stores
stock piles of sewage stowed away
from vision.
Necrophiliacs and butterfly parks. Stalk-eyed train tracks.
Curving alleyways; splinters of grass.
Escalator stairways, glass-frosted
giveaways fronting up as talismanic signboards.
Run down shanty towns papered over washed laundry boards.
Bags filled with yesterday’s scabs. Mental eyewash.

I came by yesterday to walk with you,

“Who walks through woods anymore,” you said,

“other those those crazy souls. Bereft. Alone.”

A fair distance from Paris. People traipse out behind stadiums;
to let themselves release, in conservatories, where
birds mutate into carnivores in evolution;
reversing the score.
Pterodactyl plates in museums no longer bear signage or signature plates,
as the moors who stand guard hold inquests. In selfie mode.

So the pathways curve in sonorous ways.

The birds still congregate on solitary mannequin shaped

trees set up to adorn tanks filled up to resemble lakes.

You said, “Who walks anymore anyway! And these woods aren’t woods anymore.”

Billboards scream of carparks and trees, viscerally
placed to draw our breath;
spasmodic. Entwined.
Ghost-ridden. Laughs before lights seems to be the name of the game.
No Cigarette zones and stubbed out reams. Fairy godmothers,
empty dreams,
cars plying into driveway stores.
Rubber machines. Gravel.

If you still want to not walk alone

over petrolite spirits,

there’s green bunds and verdant hillocks.

Just down from the liquor store.

You said, “Stuck between longing and love,

I’m not too sure anymore.”

The moral police occupy swathes of foliage.
Corruption is legal, but a kiss would kill.
There’s a stage ready for the next conservation advert.
Beside the stash there’s carwash tracks;
gargoyle taxidermists stuff elephants next
to toy trains that run east to west.
Plywood lines in fracture echo across territory
long held in abeyance; marked by silhouette rings
curved into the next golf course. Refreshment sins.

These are places down under

where we knew the score.

Peopled tents

and rancid bores

extended hands; and comedy out of an Elmore Leonard bookended triage.

You said, “There you go again. With something that means nothing.”

I sat down. And retched.

Rony Nair works as an oil and gas Risk Management consultant. He is also a professional photographer about to hold his first major exhibition and has previously been published by many magazines and periodicals.Rony has also featured in the Economic Times of India. Larkin’s’ collected poems would be the one book he would like to die with. When the poems perish. As do the thoughts!