SPLICED WORLDS: VEENA GOKHALE Next Poem:....................................................................................................................................... Back to Poetry Index

I

Always the strait-jacket

in the choice-infested window

man-womanwhite-coloured

hetero-homohuman-animal

Somewhere, a candle goes out

II

Even poverty is a choice here

amid hushed mannequins

living frugal earth-friendly

with money upwardly-mobile

jaunty in stock-markets and stock-piles

spreading hovels

A shroud flaps madly at heaven’s mouth

III

Brown hybrid

I, transnational professional

certified unemployable

blunder ache tremble

into another unfolding middle

A gap opens between continents

already tearing at the edges

Bodies pile high at boundaries

IV

Flickering images on TV

foreshadow everything

death eternity

mythical beast-lover

prowling craving rooms

Protest

protest the blurring

of oxygen and carbon dioxide

pumped in and out

by an unseen respirator

Narcissus fondles his double on a giant computer screen

V

Growing up with

lightening slashed fields

outside the door

enduring memory

in assaulted cities

Calcutta, Bombay

colonial creations: history flung around like garbage

composting identity

The dereliction of the millennium

VI

COSMOPOLITAN

for post-modern

ghostly voiceovers mostly demented

shaping day by day

pleasure pain giving

We will not kill for our clan

but walk the streets

in civil disobedience

every decade or so

Everything is fair game for academics

VII

The fragility of it all

melting snow pelting rain

Then… a singular thought

action even emotion

The body sets no boundaries

this lobotomy of fear

crafted into the collective

Children build cities in sandboxes

VIII

Not by choice

for no reason

on a snow-clad day

ripened by the sun

Under a tropical sky

happy with cloud

the possibility

of surviving

Whole

A dew drop slides down a grass blade

Veena Gokhale has a Masters in Environmental Studies and has been working for non-profit organizations that focus on environment and development issues in Canada. Presently, she is working for a civil society organization in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Gokhale also has numerous journalistic publications in international journals. Specializing in Feature Writing, she wrote on a variety of topics, including the arts and travel.

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