A Lady’s Handbag

I am sharing with you my first poem in more than two years. 

You were like a lady’s handbag

Cavernous

Binging on all the lists they provided;

You were ravenous…

Having not learnt the hows and whens

of letting go

you swallowed all:

            the pens, the sandals

            the pains, the scandals

You imbibed them

and you swell, like a river in July,

and hanged on

On a branch

whose xylem has been beaten by the Harmattan

On a ledge

whose underbelly has been eaten by salt

On a hand

that gets weaker every step of the thousand miles

And the wind came and broke the branch

and shook your outstretched hand

and the bag fell from its ledge

onto their torrid faces

Exposing the dross –

The gross congeries of misshapen things;

An amorphousness

Of memories lost and forgotten

Of things seen and unidentified

Of events fluxed in the static-fluidity of time

You laid there

A consciousness of shattered things

under the feasting flashes of social-media addicts

who meme’d you and mined you

into juicy feeds and newsy reads, conjecturing

            The cause

            The source…

03.05.2016