Cold Turkey

You ever wandered,
inside your own head?
Aimlessly?
Heedlessly?
Like a drunk hobo in Kansas?

There's a feeling --
I can't find --
lost in my head. Endlessly
It itches
Where I can't scratch.

A Make-Believe Poem

Seaside autumn evenings seep
between the yellowing pages
of an old journal --
And rustling,
the winds of used deskfans
smell of sub-continental summers past.

Sour

This and that... and those;
sundry remnants of little summer indiscretions
      -- they build up on you! 
Hunched over, fat, sweating in sleeveless vests;
Sort and shuffle, and burrowing through
little stacks of procrastinations,
and lotto tickets, paperback Kerouac and playboys;
Murmurs of the lost summers
of his youth.

2nd Street

Sometimes, she wonders
if Dreams are just fragments
of fear and desperation?
            Shaped, sanded, and molded.
Neat little blocks
of antediluvian uncertainties.

Out on long walks --
         the kind that's good for the soul --
Sometimes, she had thought of Love;
seeping out from behind tiny suburban windows,
where tired old wives
fight off their beer-crazed husbands.

For Noam Chomsky: On his 88th Birthday!

Thinking of you, old friend...
Thinking of our first meeting;
In a dark corner of a dusty library,
your voice first enthralled me --
Speaking from 1959, you endowed
the mind with ideas that shatter orthodoxy. And yet,
so radical in their comprehensibility.


In a trance, I returned the next day,
To that dusty corner, in 1967.
You were there! And you spoke
of responsibilities in ideas;
And I promised to always try...

For Noam Chomsky

Among other things,
thanks for explaining how
the many palettes of deceit paint
different masks for
The Truth.

Among other gifts,
thanks for the undeniable...
Courage in comprehensibility.

Neoliberalism: A Ghost Story

"How do they bear my weight?", I wonder...
Standing in silent depression,
Memories of bygone centuries weighing down
On their rocky shoulders.

They watch the water under the bridge;
As a great serpentine stream,
Struggles to wash it all.
All the lies, all the filth and all the accumulated waste of Progress and Development.
And neoliberalism colors the waters of Ganges.

I sit on the shoulders of giants;
Behind me a metropolis' heart beats,
Down in the sewers, and the gutters, and the slums;
Where its dearest families live.
And in front, ghost of an once voluptuous river;
Stinks of methane and gasoline.