Ugliest Death H

Vik Muniz. Death of Marat; after David. 2005

See the beautiful man lying - unshrouded -

In a small sunny backyard. Lying on a heap

Of mute trash and toxin, shrouded in noxious vapor -

Ugly offsprings of his own abnormal doings.

See how sad he looks in his death moment,

The face not allowed the peace and grace

Allowed to one and all a mortal sinner.

See also the bright child frozen mid-leap

As if a parting sculpture for someone.

Child, someone said you were the father of man.

You perhaps bore the wrong man this time.

See also the woman, his mother

Whose battered face betrays radiant beauty.

Burned by her own bounty and kindness.

Behold Now,

Some law granting her Justice

As she becomes justly the angry Goddess,

Savoring her revenge as she keeps alive

Her defiler - the dying man's headless ego -

While she takes his innocent heart

Like a morbid ritual's sacrificial offering.

Wake up dear Man, rise above this unclean dying.

Be a Man. Own up. Stop puerile denying.

You're Hercules and Hanuman's father.

Let this be a silly dream that went deadly wrong.

Death can be a noble song. Die with honor intact.

A message to Dreamers and Realists

Dreamer dreams and Realist keeps it real
Like Roses are red and Violets are blue.
But then a Dream is as much Reality
As Reality is a cooked-up fancy Dream,
Like a Rose goes blue and a Violet bleeds red
And also how they bloom with bees and (into us) spread.
Thus, Dreamer - Keep it real. And Realist - Keep dreams !

Sermon on Society

Society's worst curse : If it makes the man apologetic for everything.

To Charles Buckowski

Meet the crazy man on the honest street

And it's his honesty that scares you.

Retire to my ivory tower I'll,

Made of palpable bricks and bodies

Where muddy thoughts prime thickly
The surface 'neath the exterior shine.

Where is the pretty plain ivory ?

Retiring in a tipsy haze

That Friday night before the weekend,

I met a man on the street.

The man was drunk.

Yet, in spite of the Friday festivities,

The sweet fermented grain

Frothed - perhaps - in him

A dormant fermenting.

For

He almost cried. He did not howl.

The fellow held it back from the stranger

As though sentimental is not correct form.

Held back as he thought aloud of his mother

Back home in Columbia. Of her

Who had worked - back-breakingly - in the cotton fields

So that her son could eat and clothe

In comfort.

He held it back from me

When he choked about his circumstance

Which only makes for a comedian's joke.

The funny thing being his comfortable salary.

The other funny thing - Him thinking.
Why think when there's a comfortable salary ?

(Don't they say "Ignorance is Bliss" -
That maxim which most always
Lives up to its billing.)

Why care for how the world revolves. For how,
While he folded to cosy comfort,
His fellow Egyptians dared.

Yet the funnier thing is

He kept saying sorry to me,
Again and again,

For having these "issues" harbored,

And having to bother a stranger in hurry

To talk to.

The only token true thing I could give back to him,

Smiling, was the starlight coming from afar,

That must look a little extra beautiful

Over Egypt for a few days.