We do not pray any more
For the dead, Lord, instead we screw the living
Lord you started this show
And, the priests bow low, chanting
"Lord have mercy, please Lord have mercy."
So please oh Dad of Dads, motherboard of every
Bastard born, show them your rainbow
But not that techno-colored one
We’ve been seeing since the first colored
Holy book was printed and the first colored movie
Was shot showing Adam and Eve screwing
Outside your garden and enjoying it.
Show us something more advanced, more sci-fi
Its easier to slip between shadows and make
mine fields out of schools and swat at human lives
like so many flies, if you believe they are aliens.
There is just so much of pain that we can bear and
Just so many lives destroyed that we can repair. Build
again. Start from scratch. Learn new lullabies to sing
To our babies. Oh Lord and Big Daddy Dearest
There is just so much we can do, and we will, provided
You stop dangling that carrot of yours about
This afterlife bull shit. Your priests and holy men
Have fleeced us enough on that stale spiel, yet
Sodom and Gomorrah both exist under new names.
We do not even want to pray anymore for the dead
Lord, it’s worse than necrophilia. You
Ought to know by now how much
Faith we need before valor.
So just get that rainbow of yours out again
Only this time give us the direct line to the pot
With all its riches for the picking – We cannot forsake
The living. And stop raking up the dust
After we have done with our lives, for
We are the fragile living and the dust of this
Earth is sweet. And the dead are all yours to keep
Delivered on to you in heat and serve plastic bowls.
1/ The Talking
This soggy mess, this inept bunch of forecasters and
that Sun! I
can’t even take my customary morning walk
so let me throw caution to the winds and invite
His High and Mightiness, Mister Hot Balls himself
ask him to give me company
What is that cheat doing up there?
He’s perched himself like a golden parrot
gaily swinging in his cobalt cage, with
a sheet of clouds below to catch his droppings!
I can almost see that lazy lout stretching out a long
clawed foot and plucking a comet delicately
A treat he eschews like a chilly pepper freshly plucked
from the shrub.
He had his fun with Kunti, wretched woman that she was.
Now he is having fun with us!
2/ The Walking
Yes. A walkabout with the sun could be fun. I will
Dress up in a black track suit and wear sun shades to match,
So he won’t be able to steal the show. Now imagine us,
Two pictures of contrast walking side by side – and here’s
The best part: I could actually use him to grill a fish or two
Snatched from the sea before sunrise. How about
some crabs as well? I could bake those
in the sand when Sunny Boy sits down to let
the foam swipe his toes. I could offer
him some groundnuts provided he offers
to roast them for me. I ought to give him something
to quench his thirst with -
tender green coconut with a pink striped straw?
3/ The Hawking
Imagine all the tourists flocking in to get a free tan -
rows and rows of naked buttocks whiter than clams
getting ruddier by the turn, and our footprints
burning on the sand. And gulls with shells
in their beaks, neatly parted to show the meat,
florid lobsters frisking each other in the ocean, boiling
around discarded groundnut shells, plastic bags, paper cups,
stuff that mess up the sea. Now the Sun would see to that
stuff getting recycled into fine dust particles as white
as the bleached dead corals.
4/ The Stalking
We would resume our walk again, westward ho!
And, this time I would stride beside him -
a guide, a friend, a comrade in arms. And
the Sun and I would tramp past rows of traffic snarls
burning the city buses to cinders, turning the cars into can-openers
crisping the bikes till they melted into garden tools,
and furrowed through loose earth. Free up the roads –
Literally hundreds of shiny bicycles let loose
pinging their bells past brisk feet.
This time though, I would be the black shadow chasing the Sun
back to his rightful place, singing, “hut tut tut tut.”
And tie a cow bell round the Sun’s flaming neck.
Rumjhum says, "My fiction and poetry have previously appeared in e-journals like Poems Niederngasse, Lily Literary Review, The Paumanok Review, Amarillo Bay and Gowanus. I currently live in Chennai, India."