Aliens in the Metro
Aliens are seated in the metro rail.
With their eyes glued to their smartphones,
and their headphones plugged into their ears,
they have shut out the earth’s reality around them.
Their faces are robotic and restless, being totally
commanded by the signals of the virtual world.
Row upon row of these seated aliens make a
grim and scary sight.
The coach has a few near-extinct humans too –
some old and weak and desolate humans,
some non-digital, non-virtual, nature-dwelling humans –
who are standing before these aloof aliens,
in rueful silence.
Their eyes are full of ancient despair, like
the eyes of mountain-gorillas in Africa.
One frail old man is clutching a real poetry book
in his hand,
like a priest clutching a cross in a dark place
haunted by the digital devil.
Everything in the coach is trembling to be transformed
into the icons of a vicious video-game –
Reality has become a Neanderthal shame…
Barbie Doll
Anything symbolic is sinister and sexy.
Like a Barbie doll with her winking blue eyes
and lavish long legs, wearing a mini skirt
and quizzically standing on your mantle-piece.
Anything symbolic is alluring and ominous.
Like a rose with its beauty and fragrance, its thorn and
inherent peril.
The compulsive peril of love.
And for God’s sake,
who has put this Barbie doll on my writing table
at this hour of the night?
The moment I switch off the light to go to bed,
The doll spreads its legs that glow menacingly
with a bluish light–
emitting waves of its naked Nordic lust.
Terribly frightened, I scream and call you, my dear–
my real woman of flesh and blood, to rush to my room
and throw that Barbie doll out in the street–
in the garbage-vat of reality.
(Reality is a trusted friend, symbols are always deceptive.)
Terribly frightened by the doll,
I call you, my love, to hug me tight – for the rest of my life –
with the sweaty smell of your real body,
and save me from the eerie seduction of symbols.
The Guitarist
I do not exist in reality.
I am a guitarist leaving in the dreams
of a young girl.
Every night, at the Blue Tavern of her dreams,
I play live music to cheer up her ever-agitated
inner friends –
her fancies and furies, her doubts and despairs,
her passions and desires.
That’s my job and my life.
The girl has put me up in a nice bungalow
surrounded by hills and meadows.
And she pays me well in the currency of stolen kisses
of a dream-world.
The girl dumps her boyfriends all too frequently
because she detests their timidity and hollowness
which are the hallmarks of men.
She has thus hired me to protect her
from the scams and lechers of this earth.
And she will fire me if my music fails to guide her
to a true man of honour as her lover.
That’s the challenge I cope with every night–
with every scrupulous stroke of my guitar.
