New Delhi

I walk these streets
In search of a poem
Past the drunken lives of
Friday night
Pubs packed with bands playing
Old rock songs
Uneasily neighboured by neon bars
Where straight men
Wear gay clothes and suck cocktails.

I walk these streets
Hungry for a poem
In the Domino’s pizza shop
I smell a stanza
In the thick cheese crust
Outside the PVR Anupam
‘Music on wheels’ accosts ears
With sea salt shanties
That teases the tone deaf.

I walk these streets
Strung out for a poem
In the glowing night the glimpse
of a short skirt
With Goth tattoos and a vacant sign
For a face
Makes me leap into the shadows
Cast by a bus
Roving for inner city ghosts and stragglers.

I walk these streets
On the hunt for a poem
8pm the City Select mall is an exploding carnival
An Exotic warrior
Beats two drums with clenched fists while
Empty crowds
Drown beer and fill their mouths with
Pasta & seduction
Night thighs exposed to the moonlight.

I walk these streets
In search of a poem
When on the corner of Q’BA
My senses
Are accosted by a lake of vomit, in its
Textured depth
A constellation of undigested onion rings orbit
Planetary chunks
Of spicy wedges and I see my future, falling to
My knees
I tea leaf read the tiny carrots into poetic visions
The final stanza
Is in the liquid splashes of milky tequila and I become
Conscious
That the poet’s job is to liberate the inside to make
Sense of the world.