That is when I would want to stop
thinking about numbers. Straining my eyes
glued to the pages of the calendar
pinned on the wall, I marked of days
in and out. In a work life punching timecard.
You never knew how stressful it was,
to run alongside the clock ticking deadline.
And seeing life like a finish line,
guessing as if today I would be fired,
saying this day would be toast to the last.
Number is a finite word. For me, an illusion
that therein we draw our strength, our definition.
If dying is a painful exercise of keeping track,
and if calendars and clocks are its devices,
then I should shred them all together into pieces.
I’ll proceed cutting my fingers straight,
until I only have zero devoiding myself of order.
I would not want to buy the minutes,
and the hours. And of the days expanding
into months and years wanting to live longer.
When I die, so sure that I’ll predictably belong
to some cold stark concrete listed with names.
Informing humankind of milestones in a file
cataloguing folder of the year I was born
and the year that I finally stopped counting.
Solitude Amidst the Maddening Crowd
Walking Along
Posted in Current Affairs, Literature, Memoirs, Philosophy, Poetry, Politics, Relationships, Religion, Social Commentary, Society, Travel, tagged ahead, along, alongside, ants, appointment, back, behind, bob, brush, busy, catch, chase, collide, coming, crossing, crowd, cycle, destinations, directions, existence, familiar, fast, from, girl, guy, halt, heads, hurry, imaginary, just, left, legs, life, machine, make, man, memoir, milestones, mission, mobile, mom, mute, navigate, notice, One, ones, onward, other, past signals, pavement, pedestrian, peg-marked, people, phone, poem, poetry, precise, right, sea, second, shoulders, slow, social commentary, squeeze, steps, strangers, talk, time, to, tourist, train, turn, two, urgent, walk, walking, waste, way, while, without, witness, woman, working on April 15, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Here, walks people
wasting not a second
navigating urgent missions.
Without halt, in cycles
coming to and from,
fast and slow. We walk
alongside the bobbing sea
of heads and shoulders.
There goes a man
who is in a hurry
to catch his train.
While the woman
will just be in time
to make it with an appointment.
Some guy chases a girl.
And a working mom
squeezing in the crowd while
talking on her mobile phone.
Like them,
this pavement
lay a mute witness
to strangers who make their way
onward to destinations-
to directions
precisely peg-marked
as milestones to life.
Turning left and right,
brushing past signals
and pedestrian crossings
colliding like busy ants.
Our back’s two steps ahead
to the ones whom we have left
behind. Existing as familiar
tourist walking our two legs
in an imaginary life machine.
No one notices the other.
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