The long drawn out sighs
Masquerade as silence and
Vanish in a stolen exchange
They’re gone leaving
Slivers that sound like
half finished expletives
drowned out by the hate
the subject
fossilizes emotion
wrung. Squeezed out till it drips
in denial.
Cars run past
In haste
Where there never was room
To put even a foot
Forget about a stare or a glimpse
From the moral police
Sequestering in idleness
In enforcing
Unique brands of moral science
Between alcoholic hazes.
Habitats are the creation of habit
Of there being no other choice
Of being corralled
In mental encampments
Where you’re never found.
Between one footstool and the next
Your legs plied under.
Naked breasts.
___
Rony Nair has been writing poetry since 1985 and was a published columnist with the Indian Express in the early 1990’s. He is also a published photographer about to hold his first major exhibition and currently writes a regular column for two online journals; one of them widely read over South India. Rony has been profiled by the Economic Times of Delhi and has also written for them. He cites V.S Naipaul, A.J Cronin, Patrick Hamilton, Alan Sillitoe, John Braine and Nevil Shute in addition to FS Fitzgerald as influences on his life; and Philip Larkin, Dom Moraes and Ted Hughes as his personal poetry idols. Larkin’s’ collected poems would be the one book he would like to die with. When the poems perish. As do the thoughts!
Vanish in a stolen exchange
They’re gone leaving
Slivers that sound like
half finished expletives
drowned out by the hate
the subject
fossilizes emotion
wrung. Squeezed out till it drips
in denial.
Cars run past
In haste
Where there never was room
To put even a foot
Forget about a stare or a glimpse
From the moral police
Sequestering in idleness
In enforcing
Unique brands of moral science
Between alcoholic hazes.
Habitats are the creation of habit
Of there being no other choice
Of being corralled
In mental encampments
Where you’re never found.
Between one footstool and the next
Your legs plied under.
Naked breasts.
___
Rony Nair has been writing poetry since 1985 and was a published columnist with the Indian Express in the early 1990’s. He is also a published photographer about to hold his first major exhibition and currently writes a regular column for two online journals; one of them widely read over South India. Rony has been profiled by the Economic Times of Delhi and has also written for them. He cites V.S Naipaul, A.J Cronin, Patrick Hamilton, Alan Sillitoe, John Braine and Nevil Shute in addition to FS Fitzgerald as influences on his life; and Philip Larkin, Dom Moraes and Ted Hughes as his personal poetry idols. Larkin’s’ collected poems would be the one book he would like to die with. When the poems perish. As do the thoughts!
