Is it wrong to long
for the key to the door of
forbidden pleasure?

The Thursday Think Tank # 83 - YES

 I know that this is a rather late response to a prompt but i took my time. I was reminded of something that my Kenyan brother, Salem Lorot had told me once. He had told me that i should respond to a prompt no matter how late i am. Thank you ndugu!
 Here's my poem-

The little girl clutched her dolly
as she took some hesitant steps
towards a bunch of girls like her.

Each child was engrossed in her own
play, feeding her fantasies in
calm solitude, drifting off deep
into her little universe.

And among those kids there was
harmonious solidarity;
they were playing with the same toys
in typical toddler fashion.

How much the little girl yearned to
be a part of their tranquil play!

But the instinctive wisdom of
her three year old antennae
deterred her from becoming the
unwelcome intruder.

Somehow she managed to muster
the courage to walk up to them;
and in her sweet soft voice she asked,
"Can i pway with ya?" The other
kid said a nonchalant 'yes'.
She grinned from ear to ear.

The Thursday Think Tank # 82 - The Road

 This poem is about a tribe called Jarawa who face the danger of extinction. This is because of the Great Andaman Trunk Road, which was built through their forest land in the 1970's. From then onwards they've faced great hardship due to widespread poaching, encroachment and commercial exploitation of their land which is of no benefit to them. To read further about what dangers they face read this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarawa_people_(Andaman_Islands)

Here's my poem:

The road cuts through their land;
their forests were cut to level it,
driving all the animals away.
Now where do they go for fruit and meat
on an island so isolated from the modern world?
Stripping off their dignity and
dancing to the tunes of corrupt intruders:
demeaning begging is what they've come to.
The scrounge of modernity hasn't left them alone.
Curse the modern world!

The Thursday Think Tank # 80 - Choices

What after tenth?
A choice between
streams of study, each
as unappealing as the other.

Just plain old
science, arts OR commerce,
as if these aspects of
the world don't work together.

Each choice in itself is
a dead end,
an overload of information
that could be chucked
out from the
dustbin of my memory.

Two painful years might
be wasted learning nothing.

If only i could learn
only that which is
useful and beautiful
in this world:
that will be all the
education i need.

Vice-Versa

It looked like trivial teasing
meant to be laughed over with friends,
something that happens all the time
among children grouped randomly
in the rooster coop that is school.

But something more unpleasant
grew out of that trivial teasing:
when teasing became bullying,
when the hitting, poking, taunting,
shoving and hair pulling got too
much to be taken like a joke.

A surge of anger rose like lava;
enough was enough: it had to
end and it had to end someday.

The pressure of anger bubbled,
swear word volcano exploded
from a mouth that had been too
silent for months, punctuated
with kicks, punches and slaps
delivered with vindictive pleasure.

Then anger receded to the
sea of emotions
like the aftermath of a furious tsunami.

But what would remain for the days
to come is tension that will keep
crackling in the classroom, making
it harder to celebrate the
significant victory
of putting a foot down.

Aubade

Early morning light filters in
through the window's glass,
revealing dancing dust particles.
It's one of those
abstract beautiful things
that just elude your grasp.

But the woman by the window cannot grasp
the beauty of sunlight that filters in;
she is too shocked to notice things
like early morning scenes visible through glass
windows; it's one of 'those'
mornings; her heart has been shattered to particles.

Her heart has been shattered to particles
too sharply painful for her mind to grasp,
gather and repair logically. Those
paroxysms of angry grief have started raging in
her mind. His betrayal is transparent as glass:
he has gone with all his things.

He has gone with all his things:
there remain no particles
of his memory to break like a glass.
If one damned thing would come in her grasp
it would be destroyed to ashes and chucked in
the bin of her memory: it would break all those

spells he cast on her, those
spells that bewitched her to abandon all things
and fling herself across the globe to join him in
a faraway land with no approval of others, no particles
of a souvenir of love to grasp
safely in her hand, to nurse like delicate glass.

Her innocence was  transparent as glass
when he, one of those
dirty handsome men, set out to grasp
on tightly to her, a beautiful 'thing'
to keep, with not a single particle
of love in his heart. He has left her to wake up in

a lonely land, to grasp reality cold as glass;
his particle-seed had inflicted major damage: 'unwanted things',
twins to be born to her in of those dreary December mornings.

The Thursday Think Tank # 76 - Soul's Whisper

My soul need not whisper,
for it Knows that i Know.

I know it is
the only constant
in ever changing reality.
the only reality
in every changing illusion.

It is a fragment of the whole
and the whole itself.

It is ancient as time
yet eternally reborn.

It is the loudest silence.

It is all there is, was and will be.