Urbanalia

Dr. Mou Chattopadhyay

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Written

A page fills to kill the task

Of oral haemorrhage

Mouth-to-mouth clones resuscitate

And spring to life on television screens,

Surely someone dropped dead,

Muted?

 

The Astonished Globe

There was silence.

From there, the astonished globe

Stood alone in blue and brown,

Like a glimpse from another space.

Other orbits could not delve

The breathlessness of stormy seas.

Perfect hemispheres would not show

The jagged head of mountain myths.

Here and now there is speech

And ceaseless tilling of rocky shores,

What we grow, we must eat

Till we reach the seething core,

Waiting to be flung back

Where we met.

Not yet,

Not yet.

 

Megabyte

Every face opens

In megabytes.

Silicon chipped-off corners

Slowly mend

The crazy globe to Microsoft maps.

Ping-pong earths

Hurled from buttoned fingers

Reach unreached perfections.

Ether clouds on eyes

In a myopic frenzy,

A loony bin in motion

On a frozen galaxy.

 

Sparkle

Cut glass

Faces sparkle

In changing lights.

Profiles cast shadows

That leap beyond the screen.

Voices turn away

From the mouthpiece

Pour crystals into microchips.

Galleries jammed with burning eyes

Skim spaces above the heads.

Scouring distances,

The still approach - slightly averted

Oblique in life / death.

 

Chicken Talk

Head over heels

From the handlebar,

Feathered,

I watch the wheels turn inexorably,

Bloodshot eyes

Await calamity;

There is no respite in shared misery.

Doomed to individual agony,

- Fused oblivion -

Teardrops sparkle in the new sun

Without a glimmer of hope,

The mind buckles,

Folds up

To endure.

 

Manholes

Manholes stay shut

In dumb solitude

We step ahead

Without a second glance,

Effaced from memory

Till we forget to tread with caution -

Accidentally enveloped

By the subterranean labirynth

That mocks the confusion above,

We look for someone to blame -

Perhaps a July deluge

That caused the metallic beast

To stretch and yawn lazily;

Routine slumber disturbed.

More afraid of what would emerge

Than the abysmal depth,

We are startled by the geometry of

emptiness.