Unmindful of Dorothy
By R.K. Lakhi Kant
Dorothy awake
In the marketplace
Seems inconsequential
As much as little Dorothy
Sleeping in my arms
Unmindful of anything but
Sleeping in a far off place
The bigger ones
Forbearing
Doesn’t mind
Any of life’s many takes
A mind maybe busy
As beans and a comical taste
Out to grab
A good buy
Maybe blushing inside
At having to con the tourism
Reception’s profuse dates
From which she chose
A wrong travel date
Ah! That’s good
That’s good
In tones that’s free
And redeeming
The other one
Sleeping in my arms
Has an unusual plan too
She doesn’t wake up
In her sleep
Next to my heart’s
Empty god-consigned space
Dorothy slept
Or Dorothy awake
Is all for
Friendship
Maybe that’s America’s pace
In a place full of tourists
It’s quite an eyeful, and I
Usually accompany them, from afar,
To my own
Life’s fed up
Un-incremental
Untiring
Unhopeful
Living space
When I am drowsy too
While sleepy or
Wide awake
Or weary over the noodles or
Unhindered curries
I rest my mind
In the American
Who paced
I don’t know much for what
For a long time to come
Or gone
In my mind tourists have
Always been strange
Strangers each
But suddenly closer too
Stranger when the breeze
Caught them and their hairs
They come and go as the
Seasons which used to be
Bright, or otherwise change
But do no more in New Delhi,
Theirs of now more than
A 20,000 days, or even of more
But it’s a treasure to know
There’s now nothing of
All of anymore on me.
Dissimilar is looking this way
By R.K. Lakhi Kant
New Delhi which
Was my smaller city and home
I don’t take much of it now
It was a heart bigger
Than the biggest
For me
I can’t see though
Much of it now
It doesn’t disclose
And anyway I never
Felt a need to know
Disclosures are a one kind
Too many for me
Dorothy still walks
And unknown to me
My mind has started
Calculating about
The getaways too
I sleep over that
Sometimes
New Delhi’s too far from me
But this city of mine
Now turbulent
Has become a not much
Of, but all the same,
A distant getaway too with me
A fewer more Dorothy
Are still too many more than
A sleeping me.
