Instead of Turtles All the Way Down

Perhaps the world rests in an ambulance
within an ambulance inside another, and so on,
each moving from crime scene or accident
through an abysmal city
that might be a bolt attached to a panel
in the next ambulance up. Our world
races from catastrophe toward hope,
which has its own backstory, horrors, and
possible rescue in one more fleeing cart.
What are we in this situation?
Neither patients nor paramedics.
Not defibrillators, the shock they make.
We could be cells in a fleck of blood
dried on the metal floor
of one of the infinite ambulances—
a sort of absence, a bit of matter,
enigmatic in the frantic
constant saving of all else but us.

The Friendship Gallery

Passing through lost neighborhoods, I collect
shed skins of my friends, find bones
they’ve left behind. I count
their annual rings to measure growth,
distance. They’ve lived rational lives.
They’ve married, moved on, missed their exits.
They’ve shattered to shards, covered up
their nakedness in new cloaks of moss.
I miss their smells of vanilla & bread,
pick up these mementos, tchotchkes, scraps
to display as trophies in my cabinet.

My friends still come to me in dreams
to tell me things, confess. I don’t
recognize them or remember them as I should.
I want to walk among aisles of my past
as if museum corridors. The walls wear treasures.
I can’t make sense of them, but they are lovely.

Existential Crises

Some days we need arms, vodka, half a bottle
of long, white pills to force removal, welcome rest—
need the wrong word but one that names
hourly agony of being in this place, this time
(any time), so baptize ourselves, buying indulgences
(non-religious) how we transcend mundane grief.

Younger, I heard that when faced with uncertainty
men get haircuts & women go shopping,
an old (odd) generalization of how we form
unconscious responses to existential crises
rather than face the doubt, our fists slashing air,
finding air resists. Yesterday, we struck and
missed; it will be the same tomorrow.

Some days when I’m low for no reason,
not knowing what to do, I grab a slush
from 7-11 like in childhood when sugar let life
seem better. Does sugar help, or the memory?
Am I treating symptoms or disease?

A Fascination: I’ve spent my life

leaving smudges on walls, as many as I could—
intricate films, smears, blotches of shattered spiders.
how I’ve hoped these might remain beyond me.
minor stains, I create more, running fingers
over baseboards, door frames,
leaving prints of cookie dust & graphite;
dreaming the day when a new explorer sees my graffiti and
wonders what carnage happened here; hoping
when these walls are covered up, painted over,
at least one lovely blemish will burn through.

Woke to Find Her Wide-Eyed, Staring

She couldn’t sleep, lateness of hour and year
not having worn her enough
to recline in a cradle of nesting birds,
dream of becoming, dream
soft brushstrokes on the canvas
her continuous mind creates.
I dozed until my eyes, eager to embrace
a morning, joined formation with hers
at 4 a.m., after fireworks snuffed &
revelers staggered down the street,
then disappeared. She honed in.
I fought to give my focus back,
asked, “Are you okay?” She said,
“Don’t let me disturb you,”
which should’ve been my line,
escape hatch in the bomb shelter built
to protect me from my own best interests.
She told me, “Go back to sleep”
or maybe “I can’t go back to sleep,”
either of which wrote its prophecy
elsewhere in the existential night.

Also Read:

Between Us— A Poem by Indrani Tuli

Sand Worm and Other Poems— Sambhunath Chattopadhyay