Emergency! Emergent
18th September
Secret seeds strengthen, seventeen
Greedy greens
Gentlemen greet
Four freaks
Three ticks to terror tactics
Uri undone, unforgiven
Restless rebels revel
Reek red
Ratatat! Ratatat!
Machines moaning mainland mourning

Divided we stand
United in grief.

The Glass Marble of Memories

Hold up a glass marble
with pride and feel its weight roll between your fingers.
Set it against the streaming sunlight,
behold    a memory within itself.

Watch     the clock melts away
like the colourful swirls of stick glass
it turns into a lollipop in the hands of a ten year old.
                                         Splat!

Follow its roll, as the evening sepia paints
a haze softened by the golden clouds,
over the main street where your grandmother's house stands
quietly in the corner         shaded by a gulmohar.

Catch its glint in the evening sky shatter
into a shower of fiery kisses from the tree
smelling sweet like her warm chest and wrinkled neck
carpeting the porch as you enter.

Look     it sits next to her on the stone benches
amidst others in solitaire and sparkles like her silver mane
polished from coconut oil, a few disgruntled strands tied around her toe
so the wind does not get a whiff of it.
                                     
                                        You pocket it.