The Thursday Think Tank #63 - Something Stinks

Her body stinks
like the smell of rotten
eggs and human dung.
She removes the muck
that chokes every sewer
in the big bad city.

In the bowels of the city
she braves the stink
and opens the sewer.
It's a sick rotten
job she has to do; the muck
has to be tackled. She dreads the dung.

People leave their dung
for her to clean. It chokes the city
sewers with noxious muck ,
making it a gaseous stink
bomb. Everything is rotten
in this dark dangerous sewer.

They can only create a sewer
to control the flow of dung
spoilt water, and all the rotten
products of excesses found in the city.
The overpowering stink
comes from a month of piled up muck.

She has been cursed to live in muck
and condemned to clean the sewer.
She can't afford soap- she stinks.
One day the heaps of slimy dung
will claim her- a victim of the city.
It has already declared her rotten.

As she lives her fate, she feels rotten.
She has been drowned into muck
by the privileged evil of the city.
They can only make a sewer;
they can't clean their own dung.
It is them who really stink.

But the city leaves her to stink
alone; she cleans the sewers of rotten
people who're too good to clear mucky dung.

Nightmares

My nightmares make me
deaf and mute,
mocking my fears of
living unheard.

They make my throat
a tight useless lump,
trapping me in vacuum;
no sound comes or goes.

I cry, i writhe. I moan
beating my chest.
Yet no one hears
my pleas for help.

But i yell, i yell
and i yell.

My First Tanka

The T.V's buttons- gone.
What she sees instead are big
blank spaces that're
the eyes of a mean ghost. Scared,
she hides under a blanket.

The Thursday Think Tank #61 - She

Her jingling anklets
chafe her delicate feet.

Her clinking glass bangles
draw blood when broken.

Her priceless gold earrings
drag down her earlobes.

Her veil, protective from nazr*,
curtails vision, confining her agoraphobic.

Her sindoor**, the crown of matrimony,
pushes her into dull domesticity.

Her husband, the protector
doesn't hesitate to slap her.

She is Shakti***-
that's her greatest weakness.
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Some terms need to be explained. They are-
*nazr- evil eyes of lusty men.
**sindoor- a smear of vermilion worn along the parting of her hair, indicating that she is married.
***Shakti- has many meanings. They are-
1)Personification of the divine female, sadly repressed in my poem.
2)Strength.
3)Agent of change, which she can be.
4) Cosmic energy

Bindi

Between the eyebrows
is the crown of divinity.
No matter how small that
dot or smear, it has immense
importance in a Hindu's life.

Poetic
mood dampened
by incessant rain; the
cloudy musty gloom weighs down my
spirit.

My First Cinquain

Flavours
explode in my
tongue- sweet spicy
sour, as i savour a yummy
phuchka.*

*Phuchka-  is a popular street snack in India. It is a round, hollow puri**, fried crisp and filled with a mixture of water, tamarind, chili, chaat masala, potato, onion and chickpeas. It is small enough to fit completely in one's mouth.


**Puri- It is a fried Indian bread made out of wheat flour. 

My Thoughts are Not my Own

My thoughts are not my own.
They come from the millions
of collected thoughts that were
flowing through the ether,
entering receptive brains
and exiting unexplored.

Thoughts need to be explored!
Maybe that's why they wait
patiently, take chances with
the whims of the living
and roam in relentless search
of a resourceful mind.

They find me in the hope
that i'll give them a voice,
but as i write i kill off a
few unsuitable ones,
without regret, knowing that
they'll find their way.