Words toss me
hassle me into
some writing, some thinking
and some meditation. But,
poetry is a sum total of all
and then words are reduced
to ashes which burn, at
mention of words.
I knew as a child how words were mesmeric
as I stood on stage to recite poems of rhythm,
poems which scanned mind
and brain, poems that I learnt by rote, poems that the Radiant Reader in school brought peace to soul, poems of dignity, indignity, poems that were balladic, epic, nomadic. Poems where words escaped mind’s eye wrought
into worlds of laughter, sadness, madness.
And then, words fleshed them into spin-offs.