Someday, Dream: Solicitude

From the desk of Vitasta Raina
Time: Irrelevant 

An Experiment in Beat Poetry Gone Wrong

I spend my days lying in bed 

thinking of different objects that

I could paint had I the time, 

or the appropriate colour. 

I stare at walls, 

at hollow spaces in the fabric of time, 

at the curbs of the footpaths that I walk upon, 

and I think of how I might paint little yellow flowers on the ridges, 

and at every edge. 

Sometimes I stare hard at the grills of my cage 

and I know that if I had a can of white paint, 

a pair of surgical gloves and a sponge, 

I would spend my lifetime smothering the black 

iron bars that surround me in a quiet ivory white, 

knowing that I might corrode within the caustic alkaline confines of the paint thinner at the end.

That is all to life isn't it, 

a blank sheet of paper, an empty canvas. 

We all dream we'd write a saga of each episode of our existence, 

or paint in all the moments of our being. 

As though our life were the Sistine Chapel, 

and we our own Michelangelo 

sitting on high stools 

drawing diagrams of our creation on the ceiling.

My creation would be monochromatic. 

My creation would be in all the forty-four visible wavelengths of yellow light. 

My creation would be sunglow.

If it's the thought and the sentiment that make up a journey, 

if the lessons are learnt walking barefoot on grass and muddy forest floors, 

then I am there, 

for I have walked, far more lucidly in my dreams 

and in my waking prayers 

than most men do in their clumsy practice of reality. 

I have felt the waves of cold sandy air 

and the stares of strangers on my back 

as I sit in the scripts of their written destinies 

performing miracles. 

Like djinns. 

Am I a spectre, 

a vision of backgrounds, 

rock salt, evaporating like drops of the Indian Ocean? 

Am I a discarded idea, unloved, unwarranted, 

wandering through cubicles, listening to cockroaches? 

Will they capture the high points of my life on a plastic film reel, 

a slide-show of selfies in streets that no longer exist,
buildings that were demolished, 

people that were fed to the machine, 

shredded like confetti splattered in pink paint.

There are no more diamonds, 

no more sparkling wine, 

no more bejeweled drop of liquid, tears, water, morning dew; 

there is only blistering, astral blood.

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From Bombay, With Love.

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