Month: April 2022

I understand your need for space.
A place to have your little kids,
Cocooned in safety you provide.
A place to bring them ample food,
Until they learn to buzz their wings.
I understand you’re just a mom.
You’re just someone with family.

Unfortunately, so am I.
I have to give mine safety too.
We staked our claim before you did.
We’ve lived here half a century.
Your half a week of buzziness
Is not enough to hold in court.

Of course, it’s personal for me.
Or else I wouldn’t wreck your home.
You want to bring your tribe entire?
To demonstrate against my might?
You’ll find me burning candles too.
And burning is no way for you.

My lizards will escort you out.

The watchmen and the cleaning staff,
The windowed clerks and cashiers,
The nurses and compounder men –
They know you now and know you well.

“Again?” they ask. “Again,” you say.

But every repetition now
Diminishes the helplessness
And clears the way for gratitude:
Respecting efforts of the staff
And doctors and entrepreneurs
Who thrive in symbiotic hives
To save the lives of those you love.

The pain remains. Its fear remains.
The suffering from fear remains.
Remains as ashen urned remains,
Reminding you of what’s at stake.

But every repetition now
Diminishes the helplessness
And clears the way for readiness:
Prepared with calluses on hearts,
Prepared for what had overwhelmed,
Prepared with plans and backup plans
To weather quakes that rend your world.

The reason there is bad advice
Abundant on the internet
Is found in how the web’s designed:
The networks that we populate
Are biased for virality,
And not so for validity.
Virality means impressions
And impressions bring ad-earned cash.
And often harsh validity
Is buzzkill for the “hustle” mind.
The shortcut, hack, the easy climb –
Productivity masterclass –
Is fodder for the lazy mind
Which thinks itself the smarter kind.
And so you see the marketers,
The charlatans, the snake-oil men
Seducing you with massive wealth
Which happens to be just beyond
A simple payment portal page.
You hear their made-up success tales,
Ignoring all the ones that failed,
And see yourself become the one
Who parks a Tesla near a jet.
And even if you know they’re wrong
And think you will not fall for it,
You will convince yourself to watch
Or read or listen to their spiel.
And just like that you make them rich.
The algos see your single view
And single views of other yous,
And think the content’s valuable
And send it out to more of you
And send you more for single views
And each of us then starts to think
There must be some validity
“If there are millions just like me.”
And even if you do not pay
The advertisers flock to them
And write them checks with commas few
So they can reach your lazy mind,
Seduce you with a “value prop”,
Addict you with a trial (free),
And charge your card innocuously
A “heavily discounted” fee.

You know the burdens of success?
You have to own the work you do.
It’s easier to be the one
Whose luck in on a shitty run.

It’s easier to show you tried,
But something somewhere went awry,
And that is why you couldn’t be
The one to clinch your destiny.

So every time you can succeed,
You feel the breakthrough close at hand,
Remember you can sabotage.
Into misfortune, camouflage.

Addicted, normal’s what we seek.
Though what is “normal” no one knows.
Is there a normal anyway?
And if a normal does exist,
Whose normal is it anyway?
Whose context? When? How long at that?
A day? A year? A century?

In waiting rooms in hospitals,
I see no family lament
The loss of “normal” days of past:
When “surgery” was sawing bones,
When “medicine” was numbing pain.
When “patient” was who waited death.

In sitting halls, on WiFi calls,
I hear no worker reminisce
The good old “normal” working days:
When “spreadsheet” was a giant page.
When “decks” were made of cardboard “slides”.
When “CC” came in carbon blue.

In kitchens with appliances,
In Zoom rooms teaching sciences,
In ….
You catch my drift now, do you not?

“Disruption in technology.”
“Disruption in the industry.”
“Disruption in behaviour.”
Applauded and celebrated.
Awarded, ranked, and invested.

And now “disruption” makes you sigh?
Go wash your hands before you cry.

It takes me time to find the guts
To take a breath and say, “Again.”
To not give up on what I do.
But also know the time to quit.
To do the first until the last.

Today, I deal with guilty thoughts:
Uneasiness of writing words
When actions are the need of hour.
When sitting, holding hands with love,
Is all I need to focus on.
I’m here with you. Completely here.
And nothing’s more important now.
I wonder if his trembling hands
Detect the micro-ticks in mine.
The ticks that count the syllables
As I construct some metered lines
Inside my heart, inside my mind.
Is writing so essential?
If so, I must have lost the sense
Of what’s important here and now.
Aside, aside, you guilty thoughts.
It’s not the time for ifs and whats.

The testing man is tested too.
In fact, he’s tested everyday.
He handles samples all day long.
The samples come from everywhere.
The city, suburbs, distant towns.
They come as swabs in test tubes sealed.
Of course, he must be tested too.
You wouldn’t want him breathing near
The samples in the test tubes sealed
If there’s a chance he’s positive.

The testing man is tested too.
He doesn’t mind the daily swab.
He minds the testing of his mind.
He cannot take a morning off.
He cannot meet his family.
He cannot venture from his lab.
He cannot order favourite foods.
He cannot chill the Netflix out.
And yet he has to show up sharp.
He handles futures all day long.
A plus or minus from his hand
Determines quarantines or flights.

The testing man is tested too.
He doesn’t mind the daily swab.
He minds the testing of his soul.
He gets ‘requests’ from higher-ups.
He gets ‘requests’ from policemen.
He gets ‘requests’ from distant friends.
He gets ‘requests’ from family.
To call a sample negative.
To certify it urgently.
The testing man keeps nodding on.
The testing man feels overlooked.
He feels nobody sees his worth:
The courage of the testing man.
The patience of the testing man.
The wisdom of the testing man.

So, would you blame the testing man,
Who, feeling no one gives a damn,
Decides to use a pack of cards
To judge the future of some swabs?
A plus is red. A minus black.

A travel bag with change of clothes:
Each shirt-pant pair is sanitized
And rolled inside a plastic bag.
It doubles as a pillow too.
The travel bag is bubble-wrapped.
It doubles as a pinching bag.

A laptop bag with documents:
The latest latest test results,
The copies of the results past,
Certificates of surgeries,
Affidavits from notaries,
The Power of Attorney stuff,
Insurance and financial stuff.
Important docs have plastic sleeves.
The others are in folders, punched.
The laptop bag is waterproof.
It’s wrapped in plastic nonetheless.
Through sit-up nights and waiting days,
It doubles as a teddy bear.

A plastic bag with plastic bags:
The plastic is for rainy days.
(I walk or bike or take a rick.)
The plastic is for flooding floors.
(It happened once. I was prepared.)
The plastic is for keeping fruit.
(And later peel and seed and pulp.)
The plastic is for catching puke.
(My nausea’s a loyal friend.)
The plastic doubles as my soul.
(The one that I can rip to shreds.)

The Closet Poet knows he’s a closet poet.
He knows he shouldn’t be one.
He knows his words are better than him.
He knows he needs to let them out.
He’s afraid they will be quite okay.
On their own. Without him.

The Closet Poet stays a closet poet,
Remembering the one time he did step out
And let his words have open lives.
He took the love they got or didn’t,
For love he thought was owed to him.
He threw a tantrum – so Ayn Rand –
Not as a creative secure in his craft,
But one who knows he’s unloveable
And seeks power in pouty blackmail.
The Closet Poet stays a closet poet
‘Cause he shuts his doors to Love.

The Closet Poet does peek at times.
He peeks at Love who sits right there,
Right outside his closeted home.
He knows she knows he knows she’s there.
He shuts the door before she smiles.
But not before he lets some words
Escape his darkness to her light.
She waits for him. He writes for her.
And this is quite enough for him.
The Closet Poet stays a closet poet
‘Cause he’s afraid he’ll lose this too.