Blankness

Saw it today morning 

Staring at me from a newspaper

From within the frilled photo frame

Of a nineteenth death anniversary.

It was dripping along

The footpath of an abandoned love

You and I didn’t notice

The counter was out of service.

The old granny

roaming at the market place

Had it etched

In her vegetable stained

Crumpled antique fingers.

I once saw it

In a street corner beauty

disguised as her painted lips

Lingering along her cream chest wallet.

Later it was oozing out

Of a mutilated womb

In the land of empty cradles

and no nonsense walking sticks.

It flew

to fill the gasp that creek over

The hill top old age home compound wall

Waiting for a motor turning right

from around the pine line

It was smashed in between

Dry old fingers and window rails.

It cries out from the tiny tummy

That leans to see a rice grain growing

Boiling deep down the empty pot.

Carnival rhythms of plain tap water.

Again and forever…

It’s stitched, darned and bleached over

The torn petticoats of little angels

Squeezed for pleasure and ripped for ecstasy.

Let’s go watch it,

Along narrow streets

Smelling of coal under half lit moon,

Among children of heaven swept over garbage pits.

I too had a slice of it

In a classroom measuring of odds and evens

When the knowledge hit ceiling

Crumbled over my tiffin box.

I looked the abstract dictionary

To graph these bare 'Its' out

The pages were blank

White as wiped out memory.

Language dissolved

Gazes drained

Thoughts suspended

Feelings wrinkled.

Is it then 


what we call


blankness!!