Enter Home Planet News Poetry of Issue #5                        Page 41
                                   
Table of
Contents



Anteros

You stoked the sea of flames, it singed me.
There were no extinguishers: this is how
messiness of emotional kermis runs: it
interdicts. Kakistocracy or kratocracy,
power pivots exist in extralegal domains.
Orphaned heart beats journey on such
terrain: this fountain of filigree torments.
In confidentiality of one’s empire clutter
superintends. There are no guardian angels.

  Sanjeev Sethi __













Handling Grief

Wizened panhandler squatting at street corner,
and a stand-up comic with a craggy jawline plus
jocoseness on stage lay themselves on the line:
one hopes for a handout, the other coaxes you
to cachinnate. Sorrow of a jokester chasing jabber-
wockies gets to me. Why can’t people just be?
Settled with their sadness. Happiness? What is it?
I ask myself, when sad. Some questions come
with answers. Pigeonhole the critical ones, let
the pint-sized be all over the place.


  Sanjeev Sethi __


Artifice

The long in the tooth employ melancholy
as barter for attention. Of travelling light
they are lily-livered.

Unwilling to acknowledge their inner steed,
they are scared of blocking slivers of affection
filling their emotional cavities.

  Sanjeev Sethi __

Smoke
©Patricia Carragon Smoke



Expanse

I am obese.
Those on my largess
or friendly loop
term me healthy.

The ones at cross-purposes:
personal, professional, fiscal,
(no ethical issue ever)
refer to me as fatso.
Some with unlit cigars
and champagne flutes
snap: corpulent.

Depending on desire
my truelove
fuels the phatic
with cooing and cajolery.

  Sanjeev Sethi __