A Rustling of Dry Lines

A look into the newspaper-mirror
begins his day...
A God of present-day myths,
he conjures up the world
on the blank screen
with his remote-control.

Endlessly blowing
soap-bubble words
the movements of his mouth organ
causes a noisy traffic-jam.

Lost in an eternal ascending
and descending of escalators
he is an indefinite article
blown up enormously

Each shop in the supermarket
is an octave
that he plays upon
the keyboard of his teeth.
Sometimes
boarding a hollow elevator
he reaches his Olympus,
joins in the card-game,
drinks
and enjoys the burning breath of women.

His automatic fingers
skins the setting sun like an orange
Tastes playfully of its pulp
and looking at any painting
printed on the currency notes
he speaks of Van Gogh

'All that glitters is not gold'
he quotes
pointing to his shelf
of hard-bound Shakespeare

Spreading his day
wide over his dazzling laughter
he transforms the darkness of the night
into the black of a lawyer's gown


[Published in the Flatfile, a literary periodical, edited by Anmole Prasad, about a decade ago.]