We Puppets

We puppets had to wait

To pull down the puppeteers

While the ventriloquists spoke for us

We had to remain silent

While we jiggled and danced

We had to plan

We had to communicate in secret

Or how else would we organise?

We had to invent a language of our own

Unknown to our manipulators

We puppets had to wait

For that perfect moment

We had to choreograph a dance

Made just for our puppeteers

To wind our strings around their hands

Tying knots at their wrists

So that to free themselves they'd need

The same scissors that would free us too

Origami

As I gaze into your eyes I see your soul

And watch your origami figurine unfold

And as you return to a creased paper square

You wriggle nervously beneath my stare

But I mean no harm, sincerely so

I look towards you because you glow

In all eight directions out you flow

And my eyes are simply two brown holes

I could instead look away and pause

As you gaze into me with no such awe

I could instead observe your hands,

Your body language or how you stand

But my eyes are fixed looking straight ahead

And you may be wondering what it is I've read

In your looks and glances and the thoughts therein

But I swear I'm no mentalist magician

I hear your words and see your face

Against the backdrop of the human race

And to me you seem a bit out of place

Like a tortoise in a greyhound race

Your eyes reveal you'd like to see

The fulfilment of your prophecies

But what it is you'd manifest

I dare not ask nor take in jest

For though I have the power of sight

I know not what will be your plight

The corner of my eyes press your paper tight

To return you to your unseen might-

An origami shape to withstand the wind

Simple and strong and wiped clean of sin

A Plea for my Planet and Its People

A glacier melted just like that

In Nepal and Chinese Tibet.

In an instant

Thousands of lives are now gone-

Nepal, still one of the poorest countries

With one of the gentlest cultures

I've experienced,

The birthplace of the Buddha.

And Tibet, the birthplace of the lamas-

Painfully, shockingly, needlessly killed,

As the rest of us continue to live

Consuming,

Polluting,

Paying for foreign wars with our taxes-

The aircraft carriers, jet planes

Guzzling and burning petroleum fuel,

Manufacturing bombs and drones and guns,

Maintaining nuclear arsenals,

Driving emission-emitting vehicles,

Or electric cars powered by

Coal-burning electric plants.

The planet gets hotter,

Hurricanes arrive more furiously,

Forest fires rampage-

Even the upper class Europeans and

Americans are dropping dead in the heat-

Especially our elders,

Some of whom have brought us here

By their degradation of our planet

Via decisions made in corporate board rooms

And in high-up political circles,

Where lies are peddled

About our climate

And the path we are on.

Now even the engineers

Are relying on the Artificial Intelligence

That is draining our electric grids

To try to save us from ourselves,

With carbon-capture tech,

Efficient forms of clean renewable energy,

Geoengineering if it comes to that,

And maybe one day hot-suits,

Like what volcanologists wear,

To keep us cool when the temperature

Exceeds our human threshold of survival,

Not too far away in all honesty-

As we'll all be walking from air-conditioned building to building,

Not knowing what fresh air smells like

Anymore,

Looking like astronauts on Mars-

If we're so lucky.

But right now my heart has been strangled

By the scenes of innocent life

Being extinguished-

Not like the reaching of Nirvana

That Siddhartha Gautam spoke of

As the culmination of many lives

Well-lived,

But by the ignition of hellfire

By demons walking amongst us,

Dressed in suits.

As we, the meek,

Who “shall inherit this Earth,”

And those with faith,

Can do nothing but

Accept this as our Kali Yuga

And pray

I Made a Fortress Out of Words

I made a fortress of words

So no enemy could understand me

My language, multifarious

Every utterance carrying a thousand meanings

Confusion and dismay

Wrapping tightly around those who would do me harm

And I, never really being understood

Babbling on 

With the rhythmic precision of

A machine gun shooting letters on a stone wall

Doubling as a typewriter

As all onlookers and listeners

Felt their souls fleeing

In all directions

To escape

The lovely inviting snare of

My elegant sounding verbs and nouns

Making eloquent impressions in hearts

Pulling the curious close

With the promise of a signal or a sign

And washing them all away in a pulsating

Spinning and swirling

Deluge of 

Nonsense

Outweigh, Outremember, Outknow, Outlast

I flip through the glossy pages of the

magazines of my

mind

now without any of the photographs

which have long since been

cut out

pasted on whose vision boards

I do not know

as words are all that remain

in the warm blackness

of my receding brainline-

from which it can be deduced

by observing the negative space

what memories are no more

as the recollections

are not even but a flicker-

more like the barren gums of extracted

wisdom teeth

which were no more than

misnomers

from day 1.

I read to pull out meaning

from every sentence

expecting

a change in my ever-rambling

mental revolutions,

words replacing words and again

devoured by the misty white blackness,

that fog of unconsciousness

soon to be exuded back onto

paper

in a drawing or two

of images long since extinguished

in my most private

movie screen

by Odysseus's puncturing of my third eye

leaving me not quite a cyclops

as I remain with eye one and eye two,

correctable vision,

and astigmatism

(which wikipedia tells me is subjectively

noticeable by the expressions of 

refraction). 

I imagine or rather, think,

of light bending around the

curvatures of spheres and spheres of

existence

my chasma keeping a plastic record

of every sight I've seen,

every visibly blind man begging down

the corridors of a train,

every shivering man lying at death's

doorstep

in a metropolitan gutter,

every 17 year-old Ethiopian girl sombrely

describing her work,

every viral news clip not blurred out 

enough, as it hits me that another person

has died,

every glimpse at the sun,

in between flashings of the sky,

the hubris rising as if one could defeat

the sun itself

or reflect its light, scattering

its radiation in patterns

mirroring

the controlled, gusty

winds being channeled 

in spiralling paths,

in and out,

up and down,

and thru every cell of the body- 

as if one could outweigh gravity,

outremember the Past

outknow the Future

outlast Time