14. The Most Comic Tragedy

The orphans arouse each other’s thoughts,
While chilli dragons breathe fire on either side.
Stepping stones isn’t fun when stoned:
Any rule – is goddamn tough to abide

The critics calculate their pain chronologically,
While the orphans sit showered by amazement.
Rocky roads don’t compliment rum,
Any new thought just adds to bedazzlement.

The black superimposes this paper by blotting itself. Perhaps a shade darker than each of its (not the paper’s for sure) assumptions that what binds me contains itself in an idea and/or an ideology.

What in the ages of reason
Is wrong with your ungrateful poise
Repeat after me:
The Lord is my master... whatever that means.
I hope you know who I am
And who my Lord is
For if not, you will be punished
Even if you don’t know what that means

Is this a game of Chinese checkers
Is this a fucking double decker?
Why am I dressed like a clown?
Am I your muse or your amuse-
Ment!

I run fastest, I will win
I have virtue, I fight sin
Slow down, NOW
In 1, 2 & 3...
The queen of lament!
Why don’t you squeeze his arm tight my dear?
And anything else while you’re at it...
Why don’t you stop your mumbo-jumbo,
Your mumble
Has caught on to our daughter who was humble
Before she began to tumble
Into this rumble of words.

Black supper, love is hiding in the dark. Do you have the balls to go fetch it alone? You don’t fear that they may not recognise you? That’s a very distinct probability.

The halogen sings a tick-tock lullaby as it oscillates above a fairly poor set-up of a dinner table. Stares bounce of retinas but some greedy nerves Xerox it to gain sympathy, empathy, apathy, visionary careers in homeopathy...

Sheets of paper floating in the air
Packets of acknowledgement for someone else’s care
Don’t start to play before we can begin
Because that seems to actuate the end
Before you begin anything

Sick is not you, or me, or the thing in between
Sick is the realisation
Without acknowledgement
When what you have sought
Threatens to be locked away in a vault.

“Hoorah”, cried the bibi
“Hoorah”, cried her maids
Hoorah – shouting natural children
Recycle into cascades.

Have you seen the magnet?
Who could have hidden it, and where?
Inches fold hands together, hold hands together
One itches, another outright flinches
My pinches don’t prove that it’s not a dream.

Delivery man: deliver us with some peace, a pariah pope, pomp and pumping, and pay the PRICE...

I woke up this morning to find a crown on my head
A symbol of the value that sure wants me dead
Even if you’re losing miserably, don’t glance at me
I don’t believe in the charity of sympathy.

Talk to me as you, talk of nothing less
Than relative comparisons
Talk of nothing more, talk of no psyche
With invisible premonitions

I sleep this night with cuffs on my hands
A symbol that stops me from being too grand
Even if you’re winning comfortably, don’t blow me a kiss
I don’t in any way – want you to miss...
This!

Blend with me, defend with me?
No, that type actually offends me
But I do accept an aversion
Towards their stupid assertion

Talk about love in all its light
Create a revolution, start a fight
You know what – your love, it isn’t too tight
Watch out for it – It can really bite.

There is no better meal than a gratifying hypothesis
No more a refreshing drink than those made of religious derivatives
Drink it up. Don’t puke.
Swallow it all. No rebuke.
Don’t touch her.
I won’t tell you why.
But somehow, if you do
I’ll surely make her cry.

Stupid Cupid – Why’s he a schizo?
Why’s Saint Valentine being a stupid narco
Busting people every February
Maybe it’s the pressure from the pushers
Archies, Hallmark et al.

Artwork: Thangamma Cariappa