Heb-do

look onward on homing gulls,

guns arriving in somnolence.

your poet mourns his twin tower ebb,

while wordsmiths mash six adverbs a breath.

with tepid rafts one sees the shore,

moving farther, a third eyebrow.

garbage rusts in cans of pallid hues,

reflecting off a new dengue flu.

curved balls pitch melancholy rain,

boxed out soap cards, cartoon caprices.

Paris again.

Lunatics fringe mainstream chat shows

words get thrown in gourmet-harassment, assault, accost.

we all get pregnant inside our brains,

We all get pregnant to beat the rains!

2nd amendments take 2 bullets each,

for country musicians to keep the score.

Far away women run out,

                                                                          of people to accuse

Harassers get lost,

                                                                                     in the melee too profuse

Myth, deception, lies, redemption, reinvention,

Newer mother Teresa’s vacillate, draining the bled.

                                                               NGO’s second careers, maintain the score!

A new century. A new folklore!

Juwairiya 7

crabs and filaments echo shapes floating in and out of fleeting touches,

fish fingers wrapped in front of stonewall taps leading in leading on,

50 steps to the railway cross.

I saw you in another’s shoe,

holding herself up and talking modesty and charity and sharing and love!

walking ahead. always walking ahead,

over rows of doubt, self-pity blown over

by shades of steel voiced bluster.

you were always an advert for charity, lost hopes, cavernous shadows

bending within

the contours of the mind.

you would laugh and say it was all a scheme

where the orange envelopes

germinate in the mind.

cavernous reptiles, and crated slime

passing off shadows,

slaked limestone heads,

bend down ominous

over views of antenna tops ripping off like ice cream drops.

over sun touched shores filling up;

railway stations, crescent tipped bores.

 Foot note:

– ‘Heb-do’ essentially seeks to capture the loneliness one feels when one sets out to measure and stay unbiased on the holiest of all freedoms, namely the freedom to satirize. My attempt when i wrote the poem was to unequivocally condemn violence and murder as solutions. In addition i also sought a modicum of understanding from those keen to be clever and funny; that sentiments and respect need to be given first, to be received in return. The poem was a call to basic old world values of mutual respect, tolerance, and the need to balance freedom with a custodial obligation to respect and treat the other with decency!

-‘Juwairiya 7′ is part of a series of quasi sonnets that address love and loss and revisitation of places in the mind. Initially traversed “unsolitary”.  But now re-examined in isolation. J7 in particular spoke of geography and hurt, and newfound belief and activist zeal, all seeking ‘crowded’ compensating for emotional vacuity.

About the author:

Rony Nair is a poet, photographer and a part time columnist. His professional photography has been exhibited and been featured in several literary journals. His poetry and writings  have previously been featured/selected by Chiron Review, Kitaab, 1947, Yellow Medicine  Review, Sonic Boom, The Indian Express, Mindless Muse, Yellow Chair Review, New Asian Writing (NAW), The Foliate Oak Magazine, Open Road Magazine, Tipton Review, and the  Voices Project, among over 40 other publications. He cites V.S Naipaul, A.J Cronin, Patrick Hamilton, Alan Sillitoe, John Braine and Nevil Shute in addition to FS Fitzgerald as influences on his life, and Philip Larkin, Dom Moraes and Ted Hughes as his personal poetry idols. Larkin’s collected poems would be the one book he would like to die with.