The Long and Mischievous Life of Love, Hatred and Fear 
					By Steven Hill 
			(dedicated to the memory of George Floyd)

		“Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made."
					― Immanuel Kant

Now the streets are quiet again, peaceably quiet,
but it is the pause of the reloading,
the stillness of a graveyard;

	it is the morning after
for those without a future, 
viewing the hulk of strip malls charred to steel frame, 
shuffling through the shattered glass 
	of the fragile consensus, 
and the melted smell of tear gas, weeping over broken dreams.
It is the same twisted today that looks like the yesterday of a
	hundred or thousand years ago,
for those without a language whose hopes were turned to ash, and 
	swept by the aproned shopkeep into the ceaseless star-stream. 
The damage is done when the prospect of progress vanishes
	with the dust re-settling, 
when we cease plumbing the depths of the human soul to 
	find that broad territory in common. 
And as the clash of flesh exhausts its insanities,
	as the Us vs Them smashes together like dialectic atoms,
the frantic synthesis arrives in time for the new tumult,
the pieces pick themselves up and recompose,
sneak past the debris to find a way forward again, 
	arresting the black hole collapse to the backward,
leading the escape of runaways in search of
		a refuge from this most un-civil war.

But the silenced ones know, oh yes don’t they, 
that the interregnum always ends
and the relentless assault on meaning begins again,
leading once more to another round of tweeted reprisals;
across the broken landscape, the tectonic plates crack and separate
	kin from kin,
	ethnic from ethnic, 
accord from conversation, 
we watch helplessly as words tap the algorithm and 
sentences juice the emotion, 
	foreboding the passage of night swallowing the day.
History the bloody obituary written by 
	the last of the last survivors,
language a vehicle for unconditional surrender,
signed at the Court House adjacent to the ghastly battlefield,
	bearded General to bearded General, victorious to vanquished,
chainreacting all over the weaponized volksgeist, 
there are no winners here, only those who lose less.			
				
But what if we re-launched the invention of the feeling?
What if we sought where the tenderness may lie?
What if we weren’t beset by something so sad that it paralyzed?
Or if we listened harder to those who 
	had to bite their own tongues until they bled,
	to those who ended with the short end of the loaf of bread, 
	those buried beneath the missing tombstones of the mass graves.
What if the pure decision of the Good Samaritan 
replaced the pursuit of the Master Race deal,
or if our human desires were not entwined,
		like a crown of thorns,
		inside the political economy of our times?  
Here, at the apogee of our history,
the latest Great Leap Forward turns out to be   
	a backward fall into more backwardness.
The return to MAGA plantation greatness is exposed
	as another fake story of 
	white bwanas sipping lemonade on the porch,
attended by obedient Dark Continent subservience, 
such a human thing to do, to love fantasies that never were,
	as they disappear in the rearview mirror.

But the past survivals never stay buried, do they?
They ooze from the muck of the weeping mass graves, 
	the Rosewood’s and Tulsa’s and Thibodaux’s and 1919 arise 
from the cruel crypt of Hate’s harsh oblivion, 
white-world memory tries to delete from the hard drive
	the silenced evidence of ethno-cide, and 
the un-banality of evil and the sin of looking away,
	every soul guilty of all the good you did not do,
leaving us still groping toward a recognition of our real lives,
	our real history, 
the stipulated record of who really built this country,
	planted its fields, erected its towns and schools and cities,
	and laid the rail tracks to the future,
as the Four Horsemen  howled their overwhelming questions: 

Are we here?
Is this real? 
Are we sure?
Am I real?
Does here connect to anywhere?
	
If E = mc2, then how am I still here?   
How do I find a reason to put one foot in front of the other?
When will I uncover the words, consonants and vowels needed
	to arrive at the source of Something true, 
instead of circling the lonely perimeter with longing, 
	for what I cannot have, 
	for what I cannot taste and cannot kiss,
	and cannot see except in fleeting glimpses of Beauty,
that elusive Something that vanishes into Nothing. 
Yes, I see it in your eyes, my love, 
all the disappeared lives that mattered,
reflected a thousand by thousand times, 
the ones who looked after the system, previous and present,
blown like dead pollen across the centuries;
I see it in my eyes, reflected in your eyes, my love,  
the present is everything and nothing,
utterly reusable in the Grand Mortar and Pestle,
	nothing lives forever, nothing ever will,
not even you and I, my love,
	pawing through the leftovers to hoard what we can, 
to return and return as the dust of the double helix,
amidst the un-raveling of the un-civilization and— 			

	You don’t believe me, you say?
	You don’t believe this is slithering thru our DNA? 
Then why, in the realization that we are everywhere and nowhere,
why have all roads led from the many pasts to here? 
	Why, for each History’s moment, does the crossroad 
	fork yet again, to anywhere but here? 				
How do we find it within ourselves to arise from the breakfast cereal 
	into the urgency of each tangled day?
And why then do we fall down, we millions and billions,
	hearts beating fast like the Ninth in D minor, 
contesting the birthright of where we were born, 
as the Fear and Confusion plant their jeering flags
	amidst a fireworks of scorn? 

No, the streets are calm now, passably calm,
it’s dead quiet out there, beneath the noise;
despite the rumblings of marchings from those who demand a future,
despite the huddled masses barred at the border by the rusted Iron Lady, 
despite the divided “e pluribus unum” of this violent mammal trajectory,
	we thought if we plugged our ears it would leave,
	we thought if we clutched our bellies without malice, 
	we thought if we arranged the words and paragraphs just so  
that we could pacify our death-fear locked inside.

But what if the most feared thing is that which we refuse to confess:
	that Love is the strangest notion of Civilization, 
	proven to regularly run amok, 
	kneeling at the altar of heartless entropy,
		until one day we run out of luck; 				
Yet Love is also the molecular force that can bind,
and what’s bound gives the World its arrow-direction,
	in broken search for that more perfect Union, 
	you and I, a chance for resurrection,
for in the end, in the very very end, 
we are here,
	within the limits of our language,
	within the space between our opposable thumbs,
		stumbling toward governance within the parliament of hysterics,
	straining toward common ground, 
resisting the Hate that tries to overrun all representation,
	standing in defiance of the Trumped up charge and
 	the profanity of evil exposed. 

And then, as the streets re-explode in their un-poetry of un-justice,
as we gasp over our brutal re-acquaintance 
	with the imperfection of it all,
	we discover that something still lives above 
that purple bruise behind the stars,
and below the crooked tree limbs, swinging heavy with that strangest of fruit, 
our prayers re-locate the ACTG helix,  
	replicating with mercy and haloed in pearls,
until finally, we remember, just before we extinguish: 

“Our kiss is for the whole world.” 

[1] The Great Leap Forward of Chinese leader Mao Zedong was a disastrous economic policy from 1958 to 1962 to reconstruct China’s agrarian and industrial economies thru forced collectivization that led to mass starvation for  tens of millions of Chinese.

[1] A 19th century colonial and racist term for the continent of Africa. Sigmund Freud also compared adult women’s sexual life to a “dark continent.”

[1] Racial  massacres: in Rosewood, Florida, New Year’s Day, 1923, a white mob of 300 men murdered dozens of black men, women and children, and completely torched the town into oblivion, wiping it forever off the map; in Tulsa in June 1921, whites burned to the ground the prosperous black neighborhood of Greenwood, murdering hundreds and burying them in forgotten mass graves; and in Thibodaux, Louisiana , November 1887, white plantation owners, politicians and their paramilitaries murdered hundreds of black sugar cane workers and their families for going on strike, the most violent labor dispute in US history; in 1919, white massacres and lynchings of blacks took place in more than three dozen US cities, including Chicago, Washington DC, Baltimore and Omaha, after black military veterans returning from World War I asserted their labor rights, resulting in the murder of hundreds of black Americans.

[1] The four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Death, Famine, War, and Conquest, that arrive in the biblical Book of Revelations as harbingers of the Last Judgment and the end of the world. [1] Albert Einstein’s equation of special relativity. Energy (E) produced equals the mass (m) of a body destroyed times the speed of light (c) squared. That means mass and energy are the same physical entity, and can be changed into each other.

[1] Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, popularly known as the  9^th Symphony, or “Ode to Joy.”

[1] The Statue of Liberty is the figure of Libertas, robed Roman goddess of liberty, inscribed with the words “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” [1] “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…”, first words of the U.S. Constitution.

[1] Singer Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit. “Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.” [1] ACGT is an acronym for the four fundamental units of the genetic code found in a DNA double-helix molecule: adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T). They comprise the molecular foundation for all organic life.

But, Sadly It Never Will


The middle of the
night, and here I am
half drunk. Feeling
the urge to write,
but not knowing
quite what to do.

I'm not sure what
I want to say.

I feel like I'm halfway
on the way to somewhere.
I'm not totally depressed,
but I'm not O.K. either.

I'm not happy, though,
no way !
Far from it !

Earlier today, I met a woman,
an old friend of mine,
who's partner died a couple
of years ago.

I hadn't seen her for nearly a
year, or so.
So she didn't know that my wife
and father had died within
two months of each other.
When I told her, she got upset,
which made me feel guilty.

But, what can I do ?
If someone asks, " How is
your partner? ", I can't lie,
and say " Fine."

Can I ?

I wouldn't want to, anyway.
It's a very strange thing, but
I've noticed it before ;
When someone who you
love, really love dies,
for a month or two you
feel like grabbing by the
lapels everyone you pass
in the street, screaming
" Don't you fucking get it ?
My grandfather/ girlfriend/
wife/Dad has died ? "

You want it to mean as much to
the rest of the world, as it does
to you.

But, sadly, it never will. 

Direction


Can this moment be a fruit,
a moist secret, picked and juiced?
Can I follow through with my leap of faith
and leap into the coal fires of survival’s uncertainty,
be selfish as the hunter who conserves nature
so he can have enough nature to kill
and make into wall trophies?

Am I a dead mouse on the porch who made it
as far as the first freeze, forgot
to build a nest and suffered the consequences?
Am I fortunate as the found street dog,
given kibble, a warm place to lay,
a pack to call her own?

Am I here maimed but alive, 
like all things living,
crippled by the weight of time? 
Why is everything half-formed?
Only young things leap and frolic, 
free because of their dependency
on maternal sustenance and protection. 

My endurance is threadbare.
If I wash and wear it one more time
it will disintegrate and not hold form.
I know nothing but
I do know Jesus -
the bridge and the tunnel below.
I know one way, one path 
all else is
phantom blood, phantom fulfilment,
just renderings humming ‘yes yes - 
take my false face as truth,
count my money, my grand accomplishments, 
my soft seats, my high seats, 
my triple thaw and my double freeze.’

The butcher is a psychopath. The liars are in charge.
Steady now, the hand, the moon dangling on a string,
say your necessary farewells.
Jesus is walking, walk with him, 
eyes forward, summoned.

Cure

Joy is but a minstrel’s flower,
lightening under the thumbnails.
Preach of mud around the eyes,
myself a centipede, fast but fragile.
I gaze and I know the way is a path is a dream
of a hawk landing and inside that dream
anguish quickens to gold, despair into
overcoming. Inside that dream, Jesus stands
insistent in a child’s purity, burdenless, fresh
as the sun always is and always burning.

A small stone that cannot break, a love so graced
it welcomes the flooding tide. But I am broken,
eaten in tiny increments by the changing mirror -
around the evenings, around the first day’s light,
blind to all but the persistent churning.

Jesus’ great love has left me weeping, has opened
my heart, brought forth the healing, suffering mended,
miracles under a white desert sky. Be mine. Let me be
yours, travel with you, bend fully into your mystery.
The joy you give is small, unassuming, 
but is an opening like a lifting, 
where all grief and savagery
invert into its opposite, separated
from lasting damage.



Someone other


Someone said - “Be sensible,
a song is essential only if it can be traded.”
Someone squandered decades of rich meaning 
then died on the rafters of an abandoned ballpark.
“Pack up your consciousness,”
someone else said “Be out of character 
and draw the short straw with glee.”

Intellectual dreams have no limitations,
strong in complexity, strong without drama
or the heartache of disappointment.
I will dream intellectual, taste desire
as an idea, be friends with the professional 
and marry into a profession.
How much time does it take to fashion an identity, 
keep it with solid sides and a resistant core? 

Someone said - “Don’t bother
nothing is for keeps, ideals exist
until they inevitably become soiled and then
start reeking of their opposite intent.”
Many years seized you up in spasms,
aching and making
a mockery of such lofty extremes.
This planet is overstrained, never a gentle
day of just sitting.
Someone said - “Learn mediocrity if you want
happiness. Bark at the impossible squirrel 
in the impossible tree.”
Faith must be fought for, in every choice,
in the mid-days of winter and when love has gone astray.
Everyday I own nothing but this day.
Someone said - “Deal with the collapse of
what you hold as true - contemplate it like a cloud
that shifts form and wisps away.”

I heard that someone, but the joy of love
is real even when it lies flattened. Hope
is not for the faint-hearted, but for the persistent,
the reformers of gravity, the warriors against inertia. 
I say - Hope void of illusions 
draws its first breath as faith 
only in the purity of complete darkness.

Casual Garden

I keep a casual garden
burnt in places, lush by
the climbing trees. 
When in despair,
I examine the corners of that garden,
pluck the dangerous weeds
and re-set the overturned steppingstones.
I scrub the birdbath 
and fill it with fresh cold water
placing stones as platforms 
for the bees and small birds.
This garden is my favourite place to walk,
small, but with hidden nooks 
and a seat for solitude.


It took years of tending to get to this place. 
A once-thought cursed corner is now deep green
with violet hues and the prefect shade.
Still there is more to tend  
as it is ever changing. Birds come,
leave their droppings and kill 
what can be restored.
Squirrels explore, dig holes, preparing for winter.
Raccoons work their nocturnal havoc -
birdbath on its side, flipped steppingstones - evidence 
of their hunting for grubs.

God gave me this garden as a living meditation,
help when all other help is gone.
Before this, I never had a garden.
For twenty years, I had a backyard.
My children enjoyed it, my husband
took care of it.

Now this garden is my sacred duty,
an extension of my wonderous home,
mine to walk in as we all take in 
its bright varied living tones -
all four people, cats and even the guinea pigs 
have an exclusive window to view its glory.

The sounds when the neighbours 
are sleeping or away
are best. The smells are perfect 
of marigolds on the deck and the rain.
My mother says this garden is beautiful 
and she would know.
I rejoice in its poetry. 
Everything wants to live,
expand, overflow in this garden.

I don’t even know how this love affair started
or how over time it has grown into a beautiful marriage.
There is an animal graveyard in my garden -
a place in front of two tall trees, the same place 
we buried silver coins,
the best place of ease
where the white dove first arrived, 
before walking around the whole garden, 
blessing every inch before it took flight 
never to return.

When I forget God loves me, 
I look at my garden,
I step onto its bumpy terrain
and know I am one -
joined to its hallowed ground.

Revived


Sideways into the thicket
prickly roar, eyelids closed
and then a decade later, a sunbeam
latches to your arm and pulls you out,
renews your skin, the tone of your hair.
A decade lost without a voice, without
connection to your core.
Here you stand, stride, hardly limping,
a queen, tall, sure of your kinship,
sometimes still weakened by past sentimentality,
but mostly preparing for a sacred adventure, remembering
the promise to you that was made on the swing 
when you swung high as the swing could carry you -
your childhood legs gleefully kicking, your long hair 
behind you, and a smile that was more glorious 
than the first spotted spring flower. 
Whole again, set right, upright,
shedding the last of your apprehension,
growing deeper into maturity,
letting the shadows go, 
as the sweet nectar wraps around you
you start to sing - Hosanna! 
finally accepting
love is everything.





Creature


Out of step, filled
with a flame that ignites
a windfall and dreams
upward reaching, past
the umbrella and the cherished flight
of the cardinal.

One step, dancing, then tomorrow
comes and there is no dancing to be seen.
Maimed and fearful - the setting sun
coils its rays around an unhappy future and feeds
the roots with sewage.

Preferring the hope of a soft landing,
I count the pillars and a make a roof, a home.
I fall asleep with this glorious creature at my side.
I wake and it is the first thing I see. It takes me
out into a land of picnics by the water, out
of the stark slam of poverty and ancient debts that
must be repaid. 

It takes me to a greener land
where I can walk, turn corners 
and run. Where I can do my rituals, 
relieved of desperation, at one
with the hand that opens, at peace 
with the hand that holds.


Bridle


Tear and rip and proclaim
a path you cannot follow
but can taste its every nuance.
Bend into its horizon as though it
were yours, there on glorious display.

When change does not come, and it sleeps
like a long clouded-over moon, and spirits
are bones sucked of their marrow -
the most vital of these eaten by mechanical doom -
metal teeth and the turning, turning 
of grinding eventuality, wait 
and watch the images come and go.

The windows are stained
and there is no way to clean them.
Through them I see growth.
I see days I long for that may not come 
for another decade, where I will be free.
What is a day? But this thing done, this thing not done.
What is a life? Stealing wakefulness violently 
from slumber, pressing into joy 
despite the chains and another
book is read. All dreams are singular. Know
the in-breath counts. The out-breath is simply 
exhalation.




I Need My Blood


I need my blood.
I need the mornings
sightless of dark duties
and encumbering failures
that rise like a high wave
teaming with unseen predators.
I need a house without deep mud
at its doorstep and a fire menacingly
burning in the furthest backyard tree.
I need to wake up like I used to,
energized, a life to look forward to, bow to,
and say yes, I can do that, I am full.
I need God’s blowing kiss, a dream
that is more than a dead seed or grand illusion,
to step here and there solid in authenticity, 
shed the dread and the pounding trip and fall.
I need my blood
not horror-cold professionalism,
being polite while vital body fibres
ricochet against each other, bawling inside,
ripped and rolling like a fish
on a hook, heartlessly pulled
from my home and element, amazed 
by how long I am still breathing, 
here, without oxygen
or the salty waters of my belonging.
I need a bridge
to walk across,
a landscape of freedom and prosperity,
away from this decaying island I sit upon
where massive reptiles wrap 
their spiked bodies around, many 
creeping on the shore.
I need my blood,
to keep my blood,
flowing, be a voice at full strength,
no longer a sigh or a held-back moan.
I need this now
to carry on.

My branches are all but broken.
My spirit is hardening, tight, tighter
than a heavy stone.

Building a Temple


I held the hand when the body
lay sleeping, ready to erupt, erode
but it never did. 
These words are a goodbye
to the dust-bowl chaos, a vision
to act by, pick up pebbles and throw
across a field, over a fence, almost
to the other side.

The angels make a wall protecting, bending
their bodies of light like shields
over my beautiful children, as they find their way 
through uncertainties, undercurrents of terror 
and the moon’s dropping glare. 

Addiction in the ice.
Organs enflamed and removed.
But God’s love is merciful, takes us 
to the threshold, but not beyond.
Secrets are exposed, talked about without shame,
and then are burnt like charred large balls
in a sacred flame, rising 
into a steady shimmering golden canopy peace.

Sometimes the storm creates a treasure, 
a blooming happiness
after its destructive force, its taking away.
Sometimes after the emptiness, there is finally
a conscious letting go, letting in
the zig-zag flight of finches.

There is love spoken 
without conditions, love heroic.
There are ghosts silenced, pathways 
rushing forward, hearts so broken, 
now repaired, thundering forward, redeemed.





Allison Grayhurst is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. Five times nominated for “Best of the Net,” she has over 1300 poems published in over 500 international journals. She has 25 published books of poetry and six chapbooks. She lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay; www.allisongrayhurst.com

failure after failure
 
this endless display
 
a woman still acting
like a child that needs
attention
 
trying to figure out
how to attract the
man of her dreams
 
hard to sit back and
watch failure after
failure
 
the sheer inability to
get her shit together
 
too old for games
 
too old for loose
ends
 
too old for more
chaos than is
fucking needed
 
best that none of
us think about what
could have been
--------------------------------------------------------------
the lobby of a hospital
 
watching porn
in the lobby
of a hospital
 
tempted to turn
up the volume
just to see if
anyone is
paying
attention
 
the woman at
the desk gives
me an evil stare
 
she'll probably
understand when
i ask where is
the bathroom
--------------------------------------------------------------
loved dancing in the rain
 
you always wanted
to be the carefree
soul that loved
dancing in the
rain
 
instead that rain
triggers all the
arthritis slowly
killing you and
leaves you
crippled in
a chair
 
the alcohol only
helps so much
 
the pills don't
do much anymore
either
 
there's a bent spoon
and a needle on the
table beside the bed
 
just enough to take
the edge off
 
hopefully soon enough
 
it will be more than
enough to carry you
to the other side
-----------------------------------------------------------------
nowhere to be found
 
i was asked to take
an honest look at
myself
 
so, i did
 
five foot nine
339 lbs.
 
moderately depressed
morbidly obese
 
arthritis from head
to toe
 
a failing liver
 
a love for alcohol
crazy women and
a passionate lover
of sports, music
and the word fuck
 
the doctor then asked
where is god in all of this
 
as usual, i said
nowhere to be found
-----------------------------------------------------------------
dance between the dull moments
 
after hours in medical facilities
always gets a little creepy
 
you used to be one of them
perverts on the cleaning crew
 
you know what kind of thoughts
dance between the dull moments
on yet another boring ass day

J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is old enough to know where the bodies are buried. He’s been widely published over the years, most recently at Horror Sleaze Trash, The Beatnik Cowboy, Black Coffee Review, Terror House Magazine and Cajun Mutt Press. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)

Threnody

i have felt my heart weighing down in me
the other day it held the  silence of a cemetery.

some wounds will crack your bones & escort you in the mock for cremation,
but boys were taught not to fall when they are heavy.

i held mine in my chest
the water faucet in my kitchen leaks water the same way my eyes do.

i witnessed tears leaving holes in my cheek bones & each day there were
 maps that broke through me.

all i have ever felt was learning to die with my eyes wide open.

Aloysius S Harmon Jr is an emerging Grebo Liberian writer and poet. Many of his poems have appeared on Eboquills, Eve Poetry Magazine, We Write Liberia, Synchronized Chaos, and elsewhere. He is one of the co-authors to the 'Breaking the Silence Anthology', Thoughts In Words, and 'Weep No More Liberia'. He is the winner of the Thort’s poetry competition.

GOD VS FEMINIST

Pathik Mitra


Neera opened her eyes slowly. The buzz in her head had ceased. There was a strange sense of peace and tranquillity around her that she had never sensed before. The sense of pain and the deafening sound of blasts, and ambulance sirens all were surprisingly stopped. She blinked her eyes twice and looked around the empty room. A warm white light seemed to gently pacify her nerves. A piece of soothing music was comforting her tensed mind. She could not guess the source of this soothing light or music though. The room was empty other than a table and two chairs placed at the centre. What is this place? Where has Neera landed? Is she kidnapped? As she got back on her feet and started walking toward the table she started remembering her day.

She was on an assignment to cover the riots at Marufganj village in Uttar Pradesh. Two days back communal riots broke out at Marufganj as a Muslim girl was stripped of her burkha in the village school. Soon communal tensions soared high and by the evening there were 5 deaths and an imposed curfew. People were in a panic, antisocial elements ruled the roads, shops were burning and supreme hara-kiri reigned. Working for her independent news portal Neera visited ground zero. In the course of her investigations, she discovered too many dirty secrets of the local political leaders and how they had meticulously planned for the riots. But then they also found out about Neera and her findings. She was chased by a gang of thugs before she took refuge in a deserted building. The last thing she could remember was one of the thugs hurling a hand grenade at her. There was a deafening noise. But after that it was calm. Supreme calm. Trying to arrange the random chain of thoughts in her mind, Neera pulled her hair behind her head and tied it with the band.

Then a sudden realization dawned upon her. There was no escape. Her leg was injured and she could barely move when the grenade was hurled at her. So where was she? Is she dead?

Before Neera could further streamline her thoughts, she saw a lady approaching her. She was dressed in a very formal black suit and knee-length skirt. She wore black high heels and dark lipstick. The top two buttons of her shirt were open. She had a silver metallic briefcase in her hands. Just like her she had done her hair and also wore black frame glasses. With beaming confidence, she trotted towards her in her high heels. Neera could not help but admire her dressing sense and demeanour.

“Welcome, Neera! Welcome to Judgement stop” announced the lady formally.
Neera seemed to be least bothered by her presence. Being her usual self she casually asked, “So I am dead?”

“Yes Madam! Technically yes. But it will be confirmed after you get the tickets for your next destination?” She replied pertinently.

“That means I am neither dead nor alive? Kind of in-between?” Neera enquired again.

“You are in transit. Just like if you have done the check-in but not boarded the flight yet” The lady explained patiently with a smile.

“Ok Ok. Let it be. But who are you? God?” Neera asked.

“I wish I could be someday. But for now, I just keep accounts for Him. I am Chitra Gupta.” She replied.

“What you Chitragupta? But I read he was a guy, but you seem to be a woman” Neera looked confused.

“He is Chitragupta. I am Chitra Gupta. There is a space character. You see it's all about perception.” Replied Chitra.

“Wait wait. What did you say you're being a man or a woman depends on my perception? This seems to be pretty confusing. Care to explain?” Neera was excited now.

Chitra had her modest plastic smile pasted on her small lips.

“You are a true feminist Neera. You presume the world would have been a lot better if women were in charge. So how can a man be in charge of your accounts? Perceptions and notions are very powerful you see, at least over here.” 

“Ok fine. So you are just the accountant! Where is the Big boss? Where is God? I have a few questions for him?” Neera replied curtly.

“Generally it’s the other way round madam. But I presume your case is unique. God had warned me earlier. Plus you are a journalist, that too an honest, unbiased one. You represent a very rare endangered species on earth. My data says you are more endangered than the Emu or the platypus in the present day. Probably that’s why God is taking so long.” 

Soon there was a squeak in the door and they could see a silhouette stealthily walk toward them.

Chitra cleared her throat and pulled the chair. As the silhouette materialised into a human shape, Neera could not help but laugh. The man who had approached them was barely 4 feet at least 1.5feet shorter than her and had a bald head with surprisingly just two streaks of hair standing tall on his head. He wore a yellow Bermuda with red socks and pink oversize jogging shoes. He had nothing but just a floral printed violet tie on top which was resting on his paunch. He had a disgusting Hitleresque butterfly moustache hanging on his lips just below his flat nose. Even Neera felt bad for his catastrophic fashion sense.

“Welcome, Neera! Sorry to keep you waiting. I hope Chitra madam has already briefed you.” Spoke the man in a heavy voice.

“Don’t tell me you are God?” Neera asked trying her best not to laugh.

“I am afraid that’s what most people call me. But please don’t laugh at me. The way I look is nothing but a perception. Your perception.” 

“I am sorry I am an atheist. I don’t have any perception of God. I always thought it was a convenient hoax” replied Neera defiantly.

“That’s precisely the point. The cumulative summation of your ideas of me, your curses, and allegations overall culminate into this poor fashion sense of mine. This is how you perceive God. I am sorry I never thought you were so mean.” God was almost weeping.

“Wait wait so you don’t look like how they show in our serials?” 

“I know you underestimate me and my capability. But trust me I don’t have such wretched fashion sense that I will put tonnes of old fashioned gold jewellery on my bare body for nothing. Again it's their perception. A perception that I quite hate.” God replied.

“I am sorry. But still, the confusion exists. If your clothes or lack of them is proportional to my faith then you should have been naked. Not that I want it though”

At this Chitra giggled which earned her a stern gaze from God. Then He forced a smile and said, “That's not funny madam. We have some decorum and minimalist dressing guidelines here. It’s not a nudist colony you see.”

This jib kind of aroused the feminist in Neera. She had not subscribed to the idea of God from an early age and God himself was in front of her, she was in no mood to spare him. 

“You are sure this is no nudist colony? Then what about the concept of 72 virgins waiting for a pure soul, the concept of dancing Menkas & Apsaras, and the concept of seducing sorceress. The very concept of heaven objectifies and belittles women. If the idea is to reward a pure soul with virgins then it should be gender-neutral at least. You are a torchbearer of patriarchy.” Neera was excited.

“You just called God Male Chauvinist” Chitra blurted.

God opened his specs and adjusted them. He looked sad. He took up the glass of water from the table and took two sips.

“You are a feminist madam. I get it & I don’t have any objections to that. But the grave accusations that you thrust on me are unjust and unfair. Have you seen any of the so-called virgins or dancers around here? Chitra my respectable assistant is dressed modestly and I offer her my utmost respect despite her ridiculing gestures. So can you kindly reconsider your allegations against me?” God seemed to be hurt.

“It’s true I can’t see any around. But you only told me whatever I see is my perception. So how do I become sure that it's real?” 

“Precisely madam. There is no reality here. Reality is all down there. Here it’s all your perception. So if lust is what all your men perceive, then their heaven indeed needs virgins, fairies and nymphs. You can’t blame me for that. I am in no capacity responsible for that.” God replied.

“Even if I buy your argument that all ideas of heaven, swarg, Jannat, religion as a whole is man-made and all reality is on earth, still that does not help your case much,” Neera argued.

“You just said man-made and not woman made?” God asked.

“Ahh, that’s just a general figure of speech. Come on” Neera looked irritated.

“But I did not generalize it. You did. You people generalized everything. What a woman should not wear, how she should talk, what part of the body she should cover, when she should fast, which temple or mosque she should not enter, whom she should not marry! I have no role in it. All this generalisation is done by Mankind rather than humankind.” For the first time, God looked satisfied to have pushed Neera on the back foot. He looked up at Chitra expecting a smile in His support. But sadly Chitra did not oblige.

“So just like our elected government, you take no blame for the bloodshed going around in your name. You put all the blame on the poor public. You can’t just sit and watch the mad circus. Then you are not fit for the role of God.” Neera said sharply.

“Did she just question the competency of God?” Chitra could not resist. Again God exchanged a fiery glance.

“Do you believe that you all are just puppets in hands of God? All is pre-destined”.

“Surely not I take my own decisions. My life, my rules. When I am not sure what my life will be like in the next hour why will You be in charge? I want to be free. Free will, free spirit” 

“I too want the same. That’s why I have given you all the control. Then when you mess up on your own you blame me. Yet to assist you I have given you the power of thinking, sense of good, empathy, joy, happiness, poetry, music and whatnot. Yet ignoring all that you resolve to bloodshed. You blame me for that?” God was almost in tears.

For the first time, Neera felt bad for God. She was a bit too harsh on the poor fellow. He must be under a tremendous workload. It is not bad to break down at times. Even men do cry and women can console them.

“Just a moment, so you say the raging lust leading to rapes and brutality among men is also developed by them? But if lust is a basic instinct then indeed you are responsible.” Neera was not giving up.

God blinked twice & replied slowly, “Now again this is my problem. When I created man and Woman I never gave them any guidelines for not eating any apple. I wanted my creation to self-create and take civilization forward. The conjugal instincts were given to all creatures for the same reason. But for humans, I decided to spice it up a bit. Rather than being a mundane repetitive process, I added lust and love to it. I wanted the process to be an experience to be enjoyed. It's just like a pizza bread with tasty toppings. But how would I know that the humans will eat the toppings out of turn without caring for the base.”

Neera was impressed by the Pizza analogy. But she was here to combat fire with a fire extinguisher.

“But in your great process, women to suffer menstrual cramps, women to go through unbearable labour, while men will just enjoy the pizza? And you say you are not partial?”

“Did you just call God...” Chitra could not complete this time.

God snarled at her, “Yes she called me Partial. We all can hear that without you repeating it.”

Chitra bit her lip in apology and put her head down.

“See Neera I had entrusted the superior species with the greater responsibility. Naturally, women deserve to have it. The Period thing is just a part of the process. Period. Just as ATV vehicles are designed with superior suspension mechanisms I designed the woman bodies meticulously so that they can sustain the pain. Women are way stronger than men you see” replied God.

“I caught your bluff sir! Women are stronger than men. Are you in your senses or on marijuana?” Neera retorted relentlessly.

Chitra was ready to repeat if Neera called God an addict. But realising the gravity of the situation she ate her words.

“Neera I did not expect this from you. Do you think physical strength is the greatest power? I am afraid in that case Dinosaurs, gorillas, crocodiles, and elephants would have ruled the earth. Strength is in the mind and Women are designed with greater mental strength. I can bet on my creation. It’s your empathy that makes you powerful” God replied with diction.

God is Smart. Not as dumb as she thought. Neera was searching for her next question.

“So if you put all blame for violence and worldly disturbances on humans, what about natural catastrophes like Tsunamis, earthquakes and cyclones? You like it shaken, not stirred?”

“I am no James Bond, Neera. But first, you tell me what happened to your scooter last week?” 

“The air pressure was not accurate in the back wheel and the brakes were not serviced. It skidded.” 

“So can you blame the makers for the same?” God paused.

Neera realized she was stumped.

God had just delivered his glory lines with panache.

“You humans ticker and disturb the wonderful nature designed by me with pollution, global warming, hazardous chemicals and your overall Greed. In place of doing the regular maintenance of nature, you relentlessly exploit my system. Now you blame me?”

Neera could not reply. Chitra clapped in appreciation. God was happy. Finally, he made sense.

“Just a small clarification if you don’t mind?” Neera asked sheepishly.

“Again? Shoot” God thought he had nailed it but still some action was left.

“Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Jains all perceive you differently and shade blood for the sake of their difference in perceptions. Yet you don’t clarify them? Does the devil play his cards?” Neera asked.

God pulled out a box from under the table & put on a pair of black aviators & a pair of cheap lighting horns on his head. “Talking of the Devil, the Devil is here”. He grinned. Then he looked seriously into Neera’s eyes and replied.

“I told you I am not their controller just their creator. The diversity in thoughts is what makes them so beautiful and colourful. Just imagine Cakes for Christmas, Laddoos for Ganapathy, Biryani for Eid- it's all their creativity. If there was no diversity or difference in perception world would have been a boring place. I know they are stupid. They treat me often as a traffic constable whom they bribe every time they break the signal. But I ignore them. They can love and that’s the secret ingredient that helps them to fight the hardest of challenges.” 

“Huh, love is too overrated for me” Neera shrugged off.

God smiled and exchanged a glance with Chitra.

“Ok, I guess your questions are done with. I so wish your prime time TV news anchors borrow a page from your guide to fearless journalism. Time to get back to work. So Chitra Madam what do we have for Neera?” 

“She has an impeccable spotless sheet, Sir. It's confirmed Heaven” Chitra replied with excitement.

“Then Heaven it is” declared God.

Neera was silent. Her head was bent down and all of a sudden the excitement to have defeated the God in an argument seemed to die down. All the euphoria in her seemed to mould into a lump that had settled in her throat. Her nose felt heavy & her weather forecast was cloudy skies and rains. Before she could realize the first teardrop left her eyelids and landed on the ground.

“I miss mama, papa and that idiot too! I don’t want Heaven. I want to go home” Neera spoke trying her best to hold back her tears.

“And you say love is overrated my child,” God spoke softly.

There was awkward silence & God broke it.

“Chitra send her back! Convert the grenade hurled at her into a rotten egg. Delete the timeline.” God announced.

“But that is not as per protocol” Chitra reverted.

“Then understand that she has just forced God to break the rules” God smiled.

Neera was very happy after a long. But even at this moment, she was a lady after all.
“Thanks, Sir! But cant you change the rotten egg. It stinks & is bad for hair and skin” requested Neera.

God and Chitra just kept staring at each other.

Meantime the poor thug who had hurled the hand grenade could hardly believe his luck as the rotten egg crashed beside the journalist & police sirens approached them. 

a Night long gone, forgotten, erased 

with the substance-abuse of years gone, 
it’s a wonder I’m still breathing; a miracle I
still recall precious little moments from imperfect
nights of snow and glacial gusts penetrating the room
through windowless frames on crumbling walls. 

dozing off next to strangers of the night, fallen angels 
dissipating with the first ray of sunlight; spending
months hidden in attics and shooting galleries, 

struggling to maintain the few traces of soul left alive
by putting it in airplane bottles of booze. 

acid-eating time-travelers visit dreams and hallucinations,
spaceships land atop tall buildings dwarfing skyscrapers and human shells. 

early morning hours never were, lost in the crepuscular mist of yesteryears,
hollow moments vanishing inside drained (and broken)
bourbon bottles—forevermore, the eternal broken promise of hundreds of lying lips,
falsifying experiments in the grand scheme of today’s societal degradation;


erased, forgotten, completely and utterly
dead. dead
like the night, like the morning, like the
sun and the galaxy, like the dream-
less nights.
 
Emily

we effortlessly drained a fifth of bourbon while
watching old movies on the television;
we could barely follow Citizen Cane, and laughed with Casablanca,
then had a blast with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. 
in our high, we discussed future travels, how we’d
become, too, treasure hunters and adventurers.
then, we cracked the second bottle and the moment the glasses were filled,
we forgot about exploring Bolivian jungles. 
it was alright, we told ourselves during hangover mornings
and cruel early evenings; we were still young (merely 20) 
and had the whole world sitting at the palm of our hands. 
every night the moans of pleasure kept the neighbors awake
and I’d use a kitchen knife and my crazy look to drive them away
whenever someone bold enough knocked on the door to whine. 
we’d never step outside the door before 7 in the afternoon, and when
we did, it was only because we had run out of booze.
I can’t even remember how long it lasted; I remember her name all too well:
Emily. both foreigners, both belonging exclusively in the most lugubrious voids 
of permanent midnight. bottles emptied, broken, and we fucked amidst the glass. 
how long ago? when did it all happen? 
here I am, swilling bourbon nightly and, sometimes, I see
her smile painted in the stars and a tear runs down
my thick beard. I lost her,
lost it all; she liked my stories when I read them half-drunk, now, I can’t
find solace in the yellow pages residing under the worn-out
mattresses of the cheapest brothels. 
it’s alright, I keep lying; I was too drunk at her funeral and cannot even
remember the spot she rests. I wish to go and leave a rose
on the ground, all I have is this lowly poem, insufficient as it may be to do justice
to what she could have been. took me a week of
constant drinking to come back to life after her premature demise, 
I’m still drinking and recalling her radiant smile; she’s the only one I wish I had taken
a picture of when I could. I didn’t, my memory deteriorates one glass at a time. 
she, I, the world, ashes waiting to be tapped in a dirty ashtray.
nothing remains; only the smile painted in the stars. 
the empty bottles on the floor remind me of former nights, when history
no one will know of was made;  the first poems written only for her,
masterpieces hurled over the coffin; true words no one needs to hear.
I can’t remember them, too drunk, but I know, one day we’ll reunite, even in the absolute nothingness, and she’ll forgive me for all the others that lay on the couch
she once used to call bed; I watched Casablanca recently and laughed.
for one magnificent second she was there, laughing with me; I had to
drink for two weeks without a pause just to forget the soft
sound of her giggling, the kisses she planted on my cheek whenever 
I was too hungover to breathe.
 
down by the creek

we swilled fortified wine and stared at the putrid moon; 
we had nothing else to do but

hold each other, assassinate the 
sickness with strong wine, annihilate the
hangover with powerful junk. 

you used to say we’ll make it, you claimed 

the future held grand things. 

wonder if you ever glimpsed at the bleak reality;
if you saw the
monsters lurking 
right around the corner. 

we failed to evade them; succumbed to 
everything. you left 
early, no chance for your
future to withhold great things. 

as for me, I still sink well liquor, using rotgut to destroy

whatever’s left of my soul and hopes. dreams already dead, 

the pallid moonlight’s forever gone, even the creek
’s all dried up and dead

like you and the 
future you once envisioned during the drug haze. 

I’m at other creeks, with new bottles and the same old cigarettes. 
chasing down the blue dragon all around its flaming meadow 

with nothing but my trusted butterfly net.
 
Sea of Empty Bottles

harrowing nights of a hollow past
I can’t forget, nor wish to erase;
every sin is repeated as
I try to maintain sanity 
by crawling through
the empty broken bottles scattered on the floor
searching for a place to vomit. 

the wails of former ghosts reach my ears
every night, turning me into a somnambulist;
I don’t care when I wake up 
holding the kitchen knife. 

one day, I’ll do what I so many times thought of
during cold turkey nights of suicidal desires.

the mornings are always the harshest, until the first two
lowballs are poured and drained, when
the beer is still warm and tastes like a sick fox’s piss. 

it gets better, for a while;
darkness returns,
encapsulates the world like an impenetrable veil, 
the garter belt of a virgin princess and the
moments I remember are scarce and vague, nothing 
substantial except for that rainy afternoon at
the graveyard where I saw the love of my life
lowered into the ground, therein to remain 
forever. 

in acid hallucinations I encountered colors
and during a junk OD I was in the Bar. 

I hunkered down on the barstool, almost had a sip; brought back to
this world by the second, and
last, woman ever to drill a hole in the
stony exterior of my heart. 

the keyboard always dances, 
it barely works, it’s
alright, the dance is loud and wild and meth-fueled.
21st century junkie and alcoholic, 
the new millennium did not make me extinct.

for now, I’m on coffee, cigarettes, and novocaine
(sometimes, I go vintage, searching for dead spirits of the damned).

the night falls, gin is poured.
someone’s making margaritas
wearing nothing but a tiny sheer dress. 

she smiles, we drink, 
we smoke pot and pop some uppers. 

we’re here, there, everywhere,
nowhere; no more dragons for tonight,
I’ve put them to sleep.

she kisses me, I refuse to obey,
still a couple of lines to finish; 

I won’t polish the cruel words,
won’t edit the mistakes. 

let them be, 
remind you some
hone their skills by endlessly typing,
drinking rejection slips away,
fucking the nights and injecting the mornings to oblivion,
before returning to the keyboard so the dance can
commence all over again until one
lambent sunny day

darkness engulfs them and they
gain admittance to the Bar.