The winter chill pierced his
tattered coarse blanket which refused
to part from his naked body.
He exuded certain warmth,
Which the grey blanket
Fully absorbed.
Both his body and his blanket
Existed the other way round.
And for me,
The winter chill never just pierced but
It also, especially groped and pinched me…
Oozing foggy clouds from my mouth.
And my numb fingers grumbled and
Sought refuge into some warm
Contour of my well muffled form.
And, “Ah, Respite!”
In those mumbling grumbling
Ways of mine, his credulous composure
Never missed my eye.
People pass him, paying grim glances,
While the Lord spends gleefully
His grubby blanket days.
His spectacular round belly
Seemed to me a like donation box
For all the curious gazes he lives off.
Graduating winter cold saw him
More and more stark and contained.
Absolutely, a beggar in meditation
With his poverty and peace.
His holy abode is the lonely, humble,
Local Bus stop erected over the footpath.
Yes people, god is finally accessible!!
All that his ravishing presence seeks is
To mark our consciousness with
A mark of an indelible vermilion, in the
Color of his peculiar physicality.
Vermilion is passé, so he must have
Spilled sunshine over me.
And caught me in a trance.
To me he resembles the humid summers
Settling thick, rendering opaque, like glue.
His nakedness is often candid in the
obvious glow of Innermost visions.
Oh, his Earth face-
Oval, partly dark, highly vegetated,
Sometimes moist with salinity and
Inhabited by baser organisms.
Only this Earth, that he resembles,
Seems happier!!
Nature undergoing regression, maybe??
His gait isn’t madly masculine.
But Gullible and sublime.
Tells the protrusion of his belly,
“he ate himself to Salvation”
And I reply, “it reflects”.
On this the blanket gives way
And the belly button wriggles,
in possible anticipation, I presume.
His feet chuckle, I almost hear
Something in a dust laden,
Mud soaked voice.
Then his matted locks
break into an unsettling dance.
And his ruffled beauty is like magic.
Every moment growing in freedom,
Just like his own insane will.
Freedom, like himself
deconstructs structures and shrines .
Shrines are like this local Bus stop,
Humble yet Resurrected.
And gods are like him
Discomforting!
Himself, like freedom
He moves on and on and on
From here to there to nowhere!
Neha Tickoo, 2011
