WHEN I STOPPED...

If my world couldn't be
what I had thought in my teens
I can't help. I was
dependent on my father

a self-made man against
the currents I couldn't read
the sky and its stronghold

the prints of the Ganga's sand
have faded like the rainbow
in a spray of years
that prick like pebbles

now the caries, cavities
cyst and myopia haunt
and sexual anxieties
disturb sleep and dreamless nights

the hairs on my balding head
mirror the laughter
I have ceased to take note of

I have ceased to peel
the ugly shapes, the cunning
and treacherous I work with

resent my identity
and the future I fail
spinning influences

yet I'm sure when I stopped
it won't be all that bad:
my vision would still be good
I would still smell fresh air

SILENCE STINKS LOUDER

They close their eyes
or shut them with rupees
matters little

but I worry
when with sight in their hands
they free shadows

of legless men
who denude files in sun
and smell a beast.

Freedom to act
means freedom to harm as
silence stinks louder

then protest noises
lumped in chaos or monologue
quicked for a quid?